I know this topic has been done ad nauseam but I’m stuck in a decision loop that looks something like this…
“…OK screw it, I’m going to stop talking about it just get a [non-enterprise/non-rack] Synology/QNAP NAS. I rent an apartment and they have a much smaller footprint and low power draw out of the box. Damn, it really costs that much for 4 bays with entry level hardware? NIC and RAM upgrade costs how much??? What if Synology abandons that model? Where’s the fun in this solution anyway…”
“…OK I’m going to look at going DIY instead. It’s more interesting, more customisable, virtually unlimited support, can be cheaper. Man that case is big and ugly… hey that ITX case looks alright. Wow consumer ITX boards are expensive, rather limited, and look like they will suck power too. Woah OK enterprise ITX mainboards are not in my budget. Hmm that aliexpress NAS board looks alright, but could be a dice roll. Do I really have time for this anyway? OK screw it I’m getting a Synology…”
And so on… I get all the pro’s and con’s of each, and that’s part of the issue!
Ultimately homelabbing is a hobby, and if I wasn’t such a nerd I would have bought a turnkey solution already or just paid Big Tech for the solutions I require.
On the other hand, the storage is a critical part of the infrastructure and could suck the fun out of the hobby. Maybe it’s best to pay for a solution created by people smarter than me (and paid for their time), so I can spend time on fun things that aren’t mission critical.
So I want to hear from fellow nerds, which path did you chose and do you regret it?
I spend a lot of time myself going through this same thing. Was looking at QNAP and Synology and then potentially a DIY using Jonosbo case.
In the end I ended up going with the DIY solution, but using an old computer (i7 4790k with 32GB ram). The case has enough room for 8 hard drives. Currently only have 2 1TB hard drives running in zfs mirror. Going to be adding 3 8TB HDD in a mirror in the next few days.
I have been running Truenas Scale, and I don’t regret it. So far it has been doing exactly what I need. I run about 10 VM’s off my desktop/workstation. All storage for them is on the NAS which is handed off to it via NFS. And then some SMB shares for myself and the family.
I have been running Truenas for about a month now and don’t have any regrets. I use it purely as a NAS. No VM’s are hosted on it.