So I recently moved from a Synology DS918+ with 32tb raw in SHR1 to a much more substantial machine with 2 x 10TB SATA zfs mirrors as my “fastpool” and 8x16tb SAS in a RAIDZ1 as my “slowpool” (plus lots of compute, plus NVME mirrors for databases, plus SATA SSD mirrors for containers).
But I need to find a much lower cost way than I’m currently doing. I need to get started on a JBOD approach with enough bays that I can buy inexpensive disks. But it also needs to live in “living space”, so it can’t be a rackmount 2U “screamer”. Maybe someday I can move to a real rackmount approach and get a 60-bay enclosure and populate with a bunch of 4TB drives (or maybe 8TB drives will be just as cheap by that point). But not today. And I’m not scrappy enough to do a full unraid “just get whatever and stick it in a box” - I’m probably going to stick with ZFS for now. So what’s my play? Are there any “quiet/small” rack mount boxes? Are there any desktop boxes that have real bay capacity? Where do you get drives that are reliable enough when you’re buying in bulk - are there “annual sales” or anything?
I need guidance so I can join you all.
Thanks.