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Comment by rcarmo | Hacker News Reader

This is fun for learning purposes, but even with the PCIe 3 bus the Pi just isn't that great a server when compared to an Intel N-series machine.

I have two "normal" NAS devices, but I would like to find a compact N100 board with multiple SATA ports, (like some of the stackable HATs for the Pi, some of which will take 4 disks directly on the PCB) to put some older discarded drives to good use.

My go-to solution software-wise is actually to install Proxmox, set up ZFS on it and then drop in a lightweight LXC that exposes the local filesystem via SMB, because I like to tweak the "recycle bin" option and some Mac-specific flags--I've been using that setup for a while, also off Proxmox: https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2024/11/09/1940#setting-up-...

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There are tons of mini-itx N100 boards with onboard 2.5G or 10G ethernet and 6-8 sata ports for a few hundred bucks available (on Amazon for example). search “n100 mini itx nas”.

There are also some decent 6 and 8 bay mini-itx cases.

I went looking for completed systems recently and couldn’t find any integrators that make them. Surprised nobody will take a few hundred bucks to plug in all the motherboard power/reset pin headers for me.

Yeah, that’s why I was asking. Most of the mini-PC market is either doing “the cheapest possible desktop” or “the cheapest possible gaming box”.

Aoostar, Ugreen and Minisforum make mini PC style NAS boxes with 3.5" hard drive bays. I think it's the closest to what you're describing.

The mini itx boards are also interesting, but more if you're actually building the machine yourself. I'm typing this from a 16 core AMD one.

The article states "I currently run an Ampere Arm server in my rack with Linux and ZFS as my primary storage server" and this is just explaining how to try it out on the Pi, which I found surprisingly interesting. I am glad people like the N100s and wish they would find more relevant articles to talk about them.

Well, I am curious about compact SATA options, and have a peer response to yours that is eminently useful, so… I’d say it’s still on topic.

The warning about death of three SSDs doesn't inspire too much confidence to be honest... do you think it was due to the usage patterns of Proxmox default settings for ZFS?

Over time and lots of reading random information sources, I got notes about disabling several settings that are cool for datacenter-levels of storage, but useless for the kinds of "Raspberry-pi tied with a couple USB disks" that I was interested in.

I don't know how you got that idea when I explicitly say it was a hardware issue.

Ouch my fault... that's what happens for reading Hacker News in a work pause while the code compiles >_<

Obligatory XKCD reference

The Odroid H4+ might be what you're looking for. It's a N97 SBC from a South Korean manufacturer that's been around a while. The "+" variant has 4 SATA ports. With an adapter board, 2-4 NVMe drives can be attached as well.

Thanks! I’ve used ODROID devices in the past, but wasn’t aware of that variant.

Also the Odroid-H4+ supports IBECC, that means, ECC parity check done by the CPU using normal non-ECC RAM modules. Very suitable for ZFS/TrueNAS.

I do wish they'd spec-bump to Twin Lake CPUs soon.

Any good cases for that? I’d be afraid of ending up with a lump of duct-taped SATA SSDs around the PCB…

Odroid themselves sell simple cases for the H4+ like the Type 3 that can hold several drives if you don't mind the homebrew look. They also sell a mini-ITX kit that makes the board compatible with a mini-ITX case of your own choosing.

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