Question NAS with dedicated NVMe SSD for OS installation exist?

[Dave3000]

I'm currently using my Nvidia Shield as a Plex Media Server with a 2TB external SSD with my media plugged into it but I'm considering either buying a cheap refurbished Dell Optiplex SFF or a dedicated NAS. Is there a NAS that has NVMe drive support for just installing the OS while the media is installed on other drives?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Most NAS appliances have the OS on a dedicated piece of solid state storage somewhere. It may or not be nvme, depending on the age and underlying architecture of the NAS. But you're also using a proprietary OS, not installing your own. So you kinda get what you get.

If you're converting a desktop PC to a NAS appliance by dropping in a bunch of hard drives, then it's up to you how you want to use the drives of course. Your Optiplex (or whatever system you end up with) would need to either have some m.2 slots already, or a free PCI-E slot to install an adapter.

 

[Steltek]

Optiplex 5040 and higher have NVMe slots. They aren't gonna hold many hard drives, though, so you'd need an external cage for them.

Also, if you are not adverse to building your own NAS in lieu of buying a prebuilt, LSI IT-mode HBA adapters with SAS/SATA breakout cables seem to be in high availability and decently cheap (<$75, some <$50 for 8i versions) on eBay now. Could probably build a pretty decent TrueNAS/FreeNAS/Unraid system using one. Fractal Design's larger Meshify and Define cases can hold a lot of hard drives, and if you want to get really fancy Silverstone is selling a NAS case (CS382) that has 8 hot-swap drive bays for hard drives and tons of SSD options. Several build videos for CS380/CS381/ CS382 on Youtube.

 

[dlerious]

NASCompares has a few videos of DIY builds. I've seen a few with Jonsbo cases and there's this video with the Silverstone CS382

 

[Steltek]

I'm in preliminary research mode to plan a NAS build right now myself.

Though I'd like the convenience of hotswap bays, I've read that the several of the available NAS cases (including my front runners the CS380/381/382, U-NAS NS-810A, and Jonsbo N4) have cooling issues. And while the Jonsbo N3 looks better for cooling, there is no way I would use essentially rubber band handles to pull the drives out of an N3 case (which is what they send you and expect you to use).

I'm seriously considering just picking up a Fractal Meshify 2/2XL case, then popping an eBay sourced used HP Z420 or Z820 motherboard, used Xeon CPU (or two, for some of the Z820 boards), 128 gigs of used DDR3 ECC LRDIMMs, and an IT mode LSI HBA card in it and call it a day.

Honestly, I'd really, really like it if Fractal would do a modern day update on the Node 804 series. I know you can still get them new from a few places, but I hate the thought of building a NAS in a design that old and then not being able to get parts when I (inevitably) break something after they (inevitably) finally have totally discontinued it.

 

[Shmee]

Many older cases that have a bunch of 5.25" bays designed for optical drives can be used by putting HDD hotswap cages in those bays. Typically 3 5.25" bays will a cage that holds up to 4 HDDs.