I currently have a Dell PowerEdge T430 with a 20c CPU and 128 GB of RAM running Proxmox. Right now I just have an old 240 GB SSD and 4 4 TB hard drives in RAIDZ-2. I have a Plex server in the cloud that I would like to localize including bringing the data in house. Right now my data footprint is around 170 TB but I am trying to whittle that down to around 100 TB.
I am trying to figure out the best way to store the data for Plex. I use Proxmox for things like hosting game servers and hosting software that I use for work. There are only 8 HDD trays so it is not enough for a 100 TB+ storage array. What would be the best way to utilize the hardware I currently have while adding a large array of storage to use?
Ultimately I would like to utilize RAIZ-2 or similar so I have some redundancy and I would love to be able to expand the array as I add more drives to it since I figure my data footprint will continue to grow. Thanks!
Easiest way to add a ton more storage is an HBA card with external SAS ports, and a JBOD disk shelf. A disk shelf is basically just a power supply and a SAS expander card hooked up to a bunch of disk backplanes.
You can find them used for reasonably cheap, or build your own from old parts if you’re on a shoe string budget and don’t care about hotswap bays or anything.
They will act just like any internally connected hard drive, so you can make them part of whatever RAID or ZFS arrays you want.