Hi all, I have kind of trapped myself with my current DS918+ setup:
Volume 1 SHR BTRFS: 12TB, 18TB and 22TB WD Golds (26.2TB usable) - running Plex, Qbit x2, Gluetun, Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Tautulli, Overseer, Prowlarr and Beets all in Docker.
Volume 2 SHR EXT4: 4TB WD Purple - running Surveillance station with 2x feeds.
All runs smoothly but in order to expand I would need to buy another 22TB drive and a DX517 expansion bay which would cost around £970 for the extra 20TB of storage (47.3TB total usable) with only one slot free on the expansion bay which is a very expensive upgrade for what it is.
I am aiming for around 100TB+ to keep me going to for another 1-2 years so thinking it is time to upgrade and sell the DS918+ on while it still holds some value. Unsure if I will also part with the 3x Gold Hdds too, as I realise it is best to go for a 12+ disc enclosure and use much cheaper 10TB enterprise refurbs (sourced 10TB @ £86) to gradually expand instead.
I would also like to go down the Proxmox route and use Unraid or Xpenology in a VM for storage but the main question here is what hardware to go with, with a preference to upgrading to SAS (with SATA backwards compatibility) and plenty room for expansion further down the line.
I've priced up a SuperMicro CSE-826 X10DRH-C for £482.40:
- Intel Xeon E5-2686 V4 - 18-Core 36-Threads 2.30GHz (3.00GHz Boost, 45MB Cache, 145W TDP)
- SuperMicro Heatsink
- 1 x 32GB - DDR4-2933Mhz (PC4-23400, 2Rx4)
- SuperMicro On-Board SAS/SATA RAID Kit - 0/1/5/6/10/50/60
- 12 x Supermicro LFF Hot-Swap Caddy & 2 x SuperMicro SFF HS Caddy
- 1 x Supermicro (PWS-920P-SQ) Hot-Swap PSU 920W
...I like that this is pretty much an off the shelf solution, but I would lose the Intel Quick Sync Video that Plex will need, so I would need to add a graphics card and I would really not know where to start with this (would like it to easily handle 4x concurrent 4k transcodes with headroom).
HDD cost to get to est. 45TB usable would be around £513 with 6x free slots spare. So although almost the same cost as the DX517 expansion bay option it will work out better value overtime when adtional HDDs are added.
Now I am just wondering if it would be better to go for a custom case build with a QSV compatible processor without a GPU card (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefilter.html?productType=873&0_QuickSyncVideo=True).
The best case I have found so far is the Fractal 7 XL but this would cost £195 and I am not sure if I could budget the remaining components for under £300.
Be great to hear your opinions and if you think I should do a custom build, if so what components should I go for and any other 12+ HDD cases you can recommend (a few extra 2.5" enclosures and a motherboard with a couple of M.2 slots would be a bonus). Or GPU recommendations for the SuperMicro route (will need to be powered by the motherboard).
Thanks for your input. As it happens there are plenty of SuperMicro CSE-829U X10DRU-i+ 2U 12x 3.5" (LFF) to configure on that same site and they are cheaper. I have priced one up for £344.40 (without the card).
I've got 4 options for the chassis, which one would be most suitable (all the same price):
Then I've gone for:
Any suggestions on the GPU would be welcome, I am guessing something like a Nvidia Quadro P4000 could work? (data sheet)