Goal:

  • 16TB mirrored on 2 drives (raid 1)
  • Hardware raid?
  • Immich, Jellyfin and Nextcloud. (All docker)
  • N100, 8+ GB RAM
  • 500gb boot drive ssd
  • 4 HDD bays, start with using 2

Questions:

  • Which os?
    • My though was to use hardware raid, and just set that up for the 2 hdds, then boot off an ssd with Debian (very familiar, and use it for current server which has 30+ docker containers. Basically I like and am good at docker so would like to stick to Debian+docker. But if hardware raid isn’t the best option for HDDs now a days, I’ll learn the better thing)
  • Which drives? Renewed or refurb are half the cost, so should I buy extra used ones, and just be ready to swap when the fail?
  • Which motherboard?
  • Which case?
  • monkeyman512@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    You don’t want hardware raid. Some options you can research:

    • Mdadm - Linux software raid
    • ZFS - Combo raid and filesystem
    • Btrfs - A filesystem that can also do raid things

    Some OS options to consider:

    • Debian - good if you want to learn to do everything yourself
    • Truenas Scale - Comercial NAS OS. I bit of work to get started, but very stable once going.
    • Unraid - Enthusiast focused NAS OS. Not as stable as Truenas, but easier to get started and a lot of community support.

    There are probably other software/OS’s to consider, but those are the ones I have any experience with. I personally use ZFS on Truenas with a lot of help from this YouTube channel. https://youtube.com/@lawrencesystems?si=O1Z4BuEjogjdsslF

    • tburkhol@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Ditto on hardware raid. Adding a hardware controller just inserts a potentially catastrophic point of failure. With software raid and raid-likes, you can probably recover/rebuild, and it’s not like the overhead is the big burden it was back in the 90s.

    • unrushed233@lemmings.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Just want to mention that TrueNAS is FOSS and unRAID is not. And I wouldn’t necessarily say that unRAID is much easier.

    • TheHolm@aussie.zoneEnglish
      01·
      4 months ago

      I would add LVM to the list of software raids, and remove btrfs as poorly engineered.