This AIC SB407

The AIC SB407-TU is a really interesting 60-bay storage offering. Even using 18TB hard drives (all that we had 60x of on hand), we were able to hit 1.08PB of raw capacity. In our review, we will see what makes this server different in the market.

As we have had with many of our recent reviews, we also have a video version of this server for those who want to listen along or see the action of removing drive trays:

With video is a bit easier to show some of the moving bits versus the web format, so feel free to check that out. We always suggest opening the video in its own browser, tab, or app for a better viewing experience.

The front of the system is fairly simple. Unlike many servers we review, this is a top-loading storage server. That means most of the front of the system is designed for airflow, with over 3U of the 4U being dedicated to cooling hard drives. The entire chassis is only 35″ deep or 853mm. By keeping the depth reasonable, it will work in most racks. One thing to keep in mind, though is the weight since 60x hard drives can add a lot of weight to systems.

On one side, we have the 60-bays worth of status lights so one knows the status of all of the drives without opening the chassis. On the other, we have our standard power buttons and LEDs.

We will get to the drives in a bit, but the rear of the server is quite interesting, with three main areas.

Most of the rear is dedicated to a ~3U storage server. That means we get things like an OCP NIC 3.0 rear slot, a com port, two USB ports, and a management port. The VGA connection is fun as it is on the rightmost I/O expansion slot. One can also see that there is a lot of room for adding in other cards here.

To the right rear, we have an 8x 2.5″ array. These are NVMe SSD bays and designed to house higher-speed read and write cache drives as well as logging devices.

Power in our unit is supplied by 4x 80Plus Platinum 800W PSUs. These are setup as 2+2 redundant. There are also options for 1.2kW and 1.6kW in 1+1 redundant configurations.

Let us get to the big features by looking inside the system.