Stick with what works, or get a bit more ambitious?
I have x3 Drobo 5N NAS boxes with 3TB WD Red drives in each. It amounts to about 10.8TB each. I use them exclusively for serving up media to several Kodi playback devices (bluray backsups, DVDs, music, photos, etc). Nothing fancy, not terribly quick, and they've been stable and reliable for years.
I'm starting to run low on space, and need to decide what I'm doing next. Do I add another Drobo to the mix and keep it all the same? Do I upgrade the existing drives to 4TB or larger drives? Or, is it time to think about something more ambitious like FreeNAS? Or perhaps UnRAID?
Being able to add it to my server rack would be a bonus. The Drobos just sit on shelves and take up too much space.
I really want something that has a similar appliance feel that the Drobos have had, but I would like an easier upgrade path. Right now, I would have to buy a full Drobo5N and x5 drives if I wanted to expand my storage. The plus side is that I don't have all my data tied up in one system. The down side is another $500 hit everytime I get a new one.
Thoughts:
I have x3 Drobo 5N NAS boxes with 3TB WD Red drives in each. It amounts to about 10.8TB each. I use them exclusively for serving up media to several Kodi playback devices (bluray backsups, DVDs, music, photos, etc). Nothing fancy, not terribly quick, and they've been stable and reliable for years.
I'm starting to run low on space, and need to decide what I'm doing next. Do I add another Drobo to the mix and keep it all the same? Do I upgrade the existing drives to 4TB or larger drives? Or, is it time to think about something more ambitious like FreeNAS? Or perhaps UnRAID?
Being able to add it to my server rack would be a bonus. The Drobos just sit on shelves and take up too much space.
I really want something that has a similar appliance feel that the Drobos have had, but I would like an easier upgrade path. Right now, I would have to buy a full Drobo5N and x5 drives if I wanted to expand my storage. The plus side is that I don't have all my data tied up in one system. The down side is another $500 hit everytime I get a new one.
Thoughts:
- Add another 5N same as the others
- Start building a server + multiple JBOD DASes. Deals come up all the time for decent JBOD chassis that hold 8, 10, 12 drives. Could I build out a dual Xeon server, and add on a DAS at a time as I want to expand storage? My server would need a lot of HBA cards though wouldn't it?
- Build a monster 24+ drive server? I see big Supermicro enclosures come up now and then. Do I put all my eggs in one basket?
- FreeNAS vs Unraid. Freenas seems to be well liked, but slightly more complicated to expand an existing system? I'm already using UnRaid for VM hosting so I'm familiar with it. It seems easy enough to keep adding new drives, but I think there is a hard limit at 22 drives?