My NAS is a custom built PC with 4x4TB drives (which I plan to expand to either 8x4TB or 16x4TB) in RAIDZ2 running Rocky Linux.
I need a physically compact solution to back it up locally. I want my backup device be USB attachable/detachable so I could plug it to my NAS, rsync the whole NAS to it and unplug it (in order means use it like an external USB drive). Qnap TL-D800C is the most compact form factor I could find and it looks that it could work as an USB attachable HDDs.
Will I be able to attach it to my NAS, install ZFS on it’s drives (I assume the actual ZFS will get installed on my NAS and just use the drives provided by Qnap TL-D800C as just normal drives or JBOD), mount that ZFS volume, rsync my NAS to it, unmount it, and detach the Qnap TL-D800C from my NAS. And repeat in a week (i.e. attach, mount, rsync, unmount, detach).
Is this possible with this device and are there other alternatives for my use case. Being compact is super important because I’m limited on a physical space.
So in other means I’m practically looking for extremely large external HDD with redundancy (so multiple drives with ZFS) that I can rsync my NAS to.
In other words, it looks like the storage you are looking for but is really isn’t, as it is limited to being used as an extension of specific Qnap NAS systems.
So after you (@TryTwiceMedia) mentioned USB enclosure issues with ZFS I’ve read this thread and from what I’ve got it seems that older (than 2-3 years) motherboard USB controllers are not reliable enough for transferring a lot of data (which will be the case of zfs send a few TB pool). Because my server is an old i5-4670 PC I don’t think I’ll be going with TL-D800C despite stating on it’s product page that it supports Linux and Windows (It has For NAS and For PC/Server section).
Now I’m looking at TL-D800S which uses connection SFF-8088 interface and comes with PCIe card with SFF-8088 ports.
As for 20TB drives for my NAS I went back and forward between 4TB WD Red Plus and 14-18TB WD Ultrastar drives but decided on the 4TB Reds because first they are quieter (I sleep half a meter from the server/NAS) and second I doubt I’ll need more than 54TB (16 drives) and each individual drive is cheaper to replace. And for backup I want to be able to simply sync the NAS to the backup device and not worry which dir goes to which backup drive so the backup “drive” has to be at least the size of the zpool (which can grow up to 54TB if I continue with the 4TB WD Red Plus drives). For backup drives however I’m thinking about using 14TB-18TB WD Ultrastars because the backup device has to be max 8 drives (physical size constrains)
16 quiet drives will scream compared to 2 drives
Increased heat…clicking…spinning…
true, and you’ll get more throughput with more drives but you will pay for more electricity and alot more space and noise.
You can run 4 16TB drives in RAIDZ2 for 2 drives of redundancy and 32 TB usable space. That can all fit in a standard desktop case without any fuss…
Save the money from the external enclosure and apply it to more drives.