We’ve Redesigned the Storinator

The rumors are true, we made some changes to the Storinator. If you follow Linus Tech Tip you may have seen the new version of the Storinator in this video. But don’t worry, we kept all the things you love about it – we just gave it a huge upgrade.

Here’s a quick look at the new Storinator redesign, some backstory on why we’ve changed it up, and some “behind the scenes” resources to show you how kickass this new design is!    

Time to grow up: Storinator Evolution

The Storinator is known for its direct-wired architecture that provides our blazing-fast speeds, so don’t fret we’re not replacing that.  However, we thought we could improve it to make it more serviceable for our customers!

Direct-wired architecture is when we attach storage devices (HDD/SSD) to an HBA card to have a 1:1 connection, allowing full throughput of each drive. Doing this allows each drive to have an uninterrupted connection to the motherboard. Basically, it’s like having a four-lane highway instead of merging four lanes into one. 

Originally, fanout cables were used to attach four storage devices directly to a single port on an HBA card. Each HBA card connected an individual row of storage devices to the system. This allowed a significant performance boost over traditional multiplexing backplane designs.

Less cabling means fewer things that can go wrong when servicing a Storinator, which is why the direct-wired backplane is the natural evolution of the direct-wired architecture.

This awesome design still offers the 1:1 connection, the performance of each storage device is maintained and it improves any implication of the old wired design.

Keep calm & play nice: Universal Hot-Swap Support

It happens, not all drives play nice with others when living on the same power circuit. However, the new direct–wired backplane has a circuit on each drive power input to ensure that a hot-plugged drive will not bother any of its neighbors.

Spinning into control: Staggered spin up

In our previous model Storinator, the initial power surge when starting a dense server full of hard drives causes a large power spike – although only for a short time. Reducing this surge was our goal with this redesign. In doing this, we prolong the life of the power supply and reduce complexity in supporting power considerations like UPS, breaking sizing and so on.

The direct-wired backplane adds support for universal staggered up spin of the attached HDDs. This allows the HDDs to start up in small groups sequentially, therefore completely removing the initial startup power surge.

The only time we’ll cage you in: Modular drive cages

The new modular drive cages improved user feel of drive installation, improved serviceability, and improved vibration performance.

The existing Storinator design already had superb vibration performance, but the new modular cage design for the redesign further reduce vibration on the HDD and server chassis.

Below is a comparison of the old design vs the redesign when measured at the HDD directly. The lower number on the Y-axis the better. Note the dominate spike at 120Hz, this is the frequency at which the HDD spins (7200 RPM)

The glow-up: Updated Chassis Design

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The redesigned chassis not only comes with our new logo to give it a cleaner vibe and the ability to customize your front plate, it also improves thermal performance and HDD thermal performance particularly in the motherboard chamber with its new sleek design.

Head over to our configurator and design your own Storinator! If that’s not your thing and you want more information about any of our products, talk to your account manager and they will put you on the right path.

Oh, we almost forgot! The redesign offers options for Intel Xeon Scalable and AMD EPYC platforms!