Hi,
I am looking to build an NVMe NAS, for the office, for up to 5 simultaneous users for now, but to be able to accommodate 10 users in the future. Something similar to what is described here ; I would like to start only with 8 NVMe SSDs and 2 expansion cards, which will be the ongoing work projects that need to be shared and 8 HDDs which will be used for backup of the NVMe.
We are in the GIS industry and have some large projects that require collaboration and a central storage space where anyone can access, add data, make edits, etc would make sense for our type of work. The workflow implies a lot of reads, but not so many writes, except in the beginning when will be adding the data.
Components I planned for so far:
- Motherboard: Asus Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WIFI II or AsRock WRX80 Creator R2.0 – I kinda like the USB 4 features in AsRock, but besides that I find them quite similar
- CPU: 5955WX
- RAM: 128 GB ECC of what is compatible and good price in the local market
- NVMe: 4TB PCIe 4.0 - depends on what I can find available in the local market
- HDD: I was thinking of EXOS X20 18-20TB, again, depending on the availability
- Adapter Cards: Asus Hyper M.2 or Asrock Hyper Quad , again, I am inclined towards AsRock Card because its PCIe Gen4, while Asus’ is Gen 3.
- Software: TrueNAS CORE/SCALE – more research is needed on creating the pools, I was thinking 6 usable + 2 for mirrors for NVMes and the same for the HDDs, not sure if am using the right terminology here
Networking - NIC: I would prefer a 40Gb NIC: QSFP+ but I guess I could settle for 25Gb NICs: SFP28, though I feel I am underutilizing the speed that an NVMe NAS has to offer with a 25Gb NIC
- Router: we already have an TP-Link Archer X73 5400 at the office, but I don’t mind changing it, maybe to an Ubiquiti, if I’ll follow that route, as the one from home needs an upgrade:)
- Switch: I do like Ubiquiti, as it looks quite accessible for my level of knowledge and their webui looks friendly enough for me to understand. Given this, I was looking at their UniFi series and from my understanding, I would need a Dream Machine SE and a switch with QSFP+, which they do not have yet. If I were to downgrade from my desired 40Gb to 25Gb there are 2 offers USW-Pro-Aggregation and USW-EnterpriseXG-24 , though both are on the expensive side.
Assuming we solve all the networking issues and other things that might appear, I still have a situation that looks unsolvable - we are all using laptops at the office, and that means only GbE connection and the speediest port is a USB3.2 Gen 2 10Gb.
How can I connect this planned NVMe NAS to our laptops, without using a janky and unreliable solution? I can settle for now for the 10Gb USB, which in real life will offer around 600-700MB if a reliable connection through USB can be achieved.
Would some adapters like Caldigit or OWC work?
From all the research I’ve done so far, it seems like the solution is to switch to desktops and add a NIC or to Intel-based laptops and use TB3/4 - our current laptops are AMD.