Hi selfhosters,

I would like to expand my server storage and I am confused now. For a bit of context, I have a mini pc running several Docker containers and I am pretty happy with it.

Right now I want to expand my server storage and after going though some options, this is my current understanding:

  • NAS: it is a real PC with its own chip/memory/OS and we can connect to the storage via network mount. Some are powerful enough to run docker containers on them and are generally not cheap.
  • HDD enclosure/docking station: it is just some enclosure to hold a lot of HDDs together and I could just plug it into my server like an USB.

I would like to ask:

  • Is my understanding above correct ?
  • Since I still have some resource left in the mini pc and want to save some bucks, is it safe to go with the HDD enclosure ?

Thank you very much and have a nice day :D

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
    English
    0·
    4 months ago

    Yep, you’ve got it right.

    As for me, I have a pretty beefy main server so I went with a multi-drive enclosure and set up a ZFS pool with the enclosure in JBOD mode.

    I had been using the built-in RAID feature but it broke and even with formatted drives and a new enclosure it wouldn’t work, so I offloaded the RAID stuff to the server with ZFS.