I’ve wanted to upgrade to a larger NAS, and the pre-built option for the 45Drives HL15 looks really awesome for that–especially since it arrives 100 percent ready to turn on and go.
Yes, I realize there is a price premium, but (1) it’s made of very heavy metal, and (2) real humans had to assemble and wire and test it. The price includes their labor hours.
My hangup is that I’m not at all familiar with purchasing this generation of tech, and I’m not really sure what I should expect as far as longevity.
*That is, if I upgraded the system to its best compatible processor, which I believe to be the Xeon Gold 6132, what should I expect to be able to do with it (or not do with it) in a home server/self-hosting/home lab environment? The stock Xeon Bronze 3204 should be more than enough for my small home office/self hosting needs, especially if I’m just running TrueNAS Core on it bare metal (which seems ideal with that setup), but at this price I want to have decent expansion options.
My other thought was to just get the chassis and get this Eypc 7203p bundle ( AMD EPYC 7302p+ Supermicro H11SSL-i version 2.0 16cores 32threads 3.0 GHz combo | eBay ), which is without question a more powerful setup, and costs less, but aside from having PCIe 4, I’m really struggling to grasp how much more powerful it is, exactly, for my NAS + home server use case.
I’ve already built one 3U home server. It was fun, but it was also very difficult and time consuming and I just don’t want to deal with that again to get a new NAS up and running.
The 3U server I have is a 10+ year old Supermicro CSE-825. Aside from a few scuffs, it looks and feels brand new. Even the stickers look pristine. Until I got it, I didn’t realize what tanks that properly built rack mount servers were. Knowing the HL15 will have a similar lifespan makes it an appealing investment. (I’ve sadly wasted a … bit … of money on cases that turned out not to be so robust.)
I really appreciate your advice. I suppose I just wanted some reassurance that I wasn’t going to regret going with the base config for some reason. But that will be more NAS than I could ever use for years, and adding a higher core CPU and more RAM would let me make it into a hypervisor if I wanted to.
(Though, I’m to the point where I really feel like there should be one NAS on my network that isn’t virtualized or doing anything else but storing my stuff and backing it up to somewhere else. My OPNSense is bare metal and completely rock solid. I want a storage server like that. … That way, I won’t be upset if I blow up the smaller virtualized TrueNAS Core instance I want to build on an all SSD platform.)
Are you familiar with any brand/type of casters that would be suitable for use on carpet for mounting to the HL15 in tower configuration? It comes with screw in (non-rolling) feet, which I’ll be using as my 9U rack is full. The screws are: Zinc-Plated Steel Pan Head Phillips Screw, 8-32 Thread, 3/8" Long.
… That way, I won’t be upset if I blow up the smaller virtualized TrueNAS Core instance I want to build on an all SSD platform.)