Getting into Network Storage - Homelab advice

Anyone here built a trivial homelab SAN for learning purposes?

I’m considering a box running proxmox tied to managed switch connected using iSCSI to a storage array on the other end running FreeBSD with zfs.

Nothing sexy, performance not an issue - internal purposes and learning only. I’ll probably spin up a rails app, file server and git server as the network services this SAN supports.

Keep in mind, I have a wife who doesn’t think IT is cool - so basically sound is a consideration in addition to cost.

Ideas, thoughts, questions - fire away!!!

Thanks!

FCoE and FC perform much better than iSCSI

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I was thinking iSCSI for cost. If this is a trivial homelab experiment/learning environment would that affect your recommendation?

Keep in mind I’m going to likely have to pay out the arse for all the hardware to get this up and running. It really has no purpose but to practice creating pools and matching those to VMs that do trivial service on my LAN.

I wonder if I can do this with a box that has a quad core processor, 16gb of ram, dual nics and 128gb sshd (proxmox box).

My home proxmox “server” is a core i7-6700 with 64GB of memory.

So no reason why that config wont work.

Mines going to suck compared to yours but…

For the storage array any direction you can point me towards for hardware where I can install an OS on it and configure a RAID 3 or 5. I’m thinking at least half a TB of total available storage.

If you get familiar with mdadm you can create whichever raid you like, you’ll just be limited by the number of sata ports until you get a sas/sata HBA or raid controller card.