I am currently running a FreeBSD system on an old Dell Optiplex 790 (i3 2100) that has been upgraded a bit.

It has 16G of ram, and 5 hard drives: 1TiB SATA SSD, where the OS itself is installed, using UFS+/FFS filesystem.

The other 4 are 3TiB SAS drives, connected to an LSI 9300 HBA, and are in a ZFS raidz1 configuration.

I would prefer to stick with FreeBSD, but would also consider TrueNAS Core (also FreeBSD based).

Here’s the problem. The 5 hard drives don’t quite fit into the case. The side panel won’t close completely due to the SAS connectors being slightly larger than the original SATA connectors the case was designed for.

My budget is sub $300.

I’ve seen a few 2U and 4U servers on eBay that seem to fit the bill. My concern is that energy usage would be significantly higher than it is now.

Any suggestions for alternative ideas that keep my existing storage would be much appreciated.

  • Skunk@jlai.lu
    2·
    5 hours ago

    I have a 8 sas drive ITX NAS. The one and only case that I found suitable is the Jonsbo N3 as it has a sata/sas back panel. It fits all of that in a small size so it is great.

    It fits your price (not if you have to buy an itx motherboard tho) but it’s hard to find, even harder on second hand market.

    (For the hardware inside it I went to used consumer hardware, like asus itx MB, intel 10500t and ddr4 non ec, for the same reason as you).

    • HiTekRedNek@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      That’s about the way I was leaning, to just get a bigger case, but the problem is, the current system is mATX, so I would need all new internals, and then, as you say, that goes quite a bit over my current budget.

      I’ll keep looking. Thanks.

    • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      4 hours ago

      I just bought one recently. There’s a bunch of listings on AliExpress. Shipping took a while, obviously, and if you’re in the US, good fucking luck. But the case itself is solid. A little weirdly laid out, but I suppose that’s typical of ITX cases.

      • Skunk@jlai.lu
        1·
        4 hours ago

        I got mine from my local eBay as 100% of the server is built on used hardware auctions.

        The case took ages to find, mostly why it took me one year to build this server but I wasn’t in a hurry.