Tape is a nice option, but it makes sense if you need to backup a lot of data. I personally have a local NAS, which is used as a backup target, and another one for offsite. You will need a library, tape drives, SAS HBAs. You should plan first and then buy all the equipment you need, As mentioned, you might consider m-disc as an alternative. In case you want to play with Tape, you can test Starwinds VTL. https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-tape-library
Candy_Badger
joined 11 months ago
Nice setup. Good job!
VMware vSAN cluster, ceph cluster, building HA for different services, containers, k8s cluster. The list goes on.
TrueNAS is an option. However, I am not sure if you can configure active-active cluster with it. As for VMware vSAN, you can place a Witness on a small device (e.g. Raspberry PI). It is a nice option for a homelab. https://williamlam.com/2020/10/vsan-witness-using-raspberry-pi-4-esxi-arm-fling.html
Since you already have Starwinds licenses, I would go for it. 2 node cluster on top of ESXi works great. We have customers using it with no issues.
I prefer using separate subnets for different network adapters. In any case, create vswitch and vmkernel for each network port and configure IPs.