What would you do? [Home Server Storage Refresh]

Hardware Hub Storage
1

Pondering if I should change my storage arrangements as my current disks approach 5 years old.

Current setup 2x12TB Toshiba MG07 connected to an IT Mode IBM M1015 (LSI 9211-8i) which is passed through to a TrueNAS Core VM running on current ESXI 8. Disks are running in a ZFS mirror. Been running without fault for well over 4 years now, only “issue” I’ve ever encountered is that moving data from one area to another on the disks can be a little slow (only to be expected with two spindles in a mirror, I know).

Capacity is well within what I need, approx. 5TB used at present.
Usage pattern is as a media vault / backup target (via iSCSI) / general shared folder provision on my home LAN. VMs run from separate NVMe drives directly on the motherboard and presented via ESXI, so the TrueNAS data is primarily write-once read-many, with a mix of small and large files.

Options to refresh/renew:

  1. Straight up replacement of the 2x12TB disks with 2x12TB+ disks (whatever is best £/TB at the time). Would buy Enterprise grade drives only, most likely Toshiba MG08s. Cheapest option/TB.
  2. Improve IOPs by moving to maybe 4x4tb disks or similar, more spindles more better? 4 Disk RAIDZ1. Again Toshiba MG08s or Seagate Ironwolf/Pros. Bit more expensive but not drastically so.
  3. Go all-SSD, 4x4TB consumer SATA disks (e.g. Crucial MX500 or similar), 4 disk RAIDZ1. Worried about write endurance issues under ZFS, but as it’s mostly static data that doesn’t change, might be ok? Bit more money but not as much as enterprise SSDs.
  4. Go all-SSD, 4x4TB TLC or QLC NVMe disks on a card such as the QNAP QM2-4P-384 (4xM.2 to PCIe x8 via a PCIe switch). 4 disk RAIDZ1. Fancy, fast, worried about write endurance. Pretty expensive.
  5. All-SSD, 3 or 4 3.84TB used Enterprise SATA/SAS SSDs. 3/4 disk RAIDZ1. Most expensive option and worried about used parts.

What would you do? Any thoughts are appreciated, I’m kinda torn but leaning towards option 2 myself as the option with fewest worries and which should improve performance a little. Also am I being paranoid in planning to replace the disks as they come up to 5 years old? :slight_smile:

2

I would make the 2x12tb drives your backup and then move to nvme 3 drive RZ1 Pool since your usage is so low (Assuming you have the lanes for it) (Could do mirrors for performance but then you would need 4 drives)

3

Since capacity needs are low, an Asustor Flashstor 6 bay unit coupled with three sub $200 4TB m.2 drives in raid 5 or z1 should do the job just fine here. Expand as necessary, up to 20 TB redundant storage.

Write endurance should be fine for five years or so provided you go TLC drives. I count a sub $1k price tag here.