Goal:
- 16TB mirrored on 2 drives (raid 1)
- Hardware raid?
- Immich, Jellyfin and Nextcloud. (All docker)
- N100, 8+ GB RAM
- 500gb boot drive ssd
- 4 HDD bays, start with using 2
Questions:
- Which os?
- My though was to use hardware raid, and just set that up for the 2 hdds, then boot off an ssd with Debian (very familiar, and use it for current server which has 30+ docker containers. Basically I like and am good at docker so would like to stick to Debian+docker. But if hardware raid isn’t the best option for HDDs now a days, I’ll learn the better thing)
- Which drives? Renewed or refurb are half the cost, so should I buy extra used ones, and just be ready to swap when the fail?
- Which motherboard?
- Which case?
I’d recommend BTRFS in RAID1 over hardware or mdadm raid. You get FS snapshotting as a feature, which would be nice before running a system update.
For disk drives, I’d recommend new if you can afford them. You should look into shucking: It’s where you buy an external drive and then remove (shuck) the HDD from inside. You can get enterprise grade disks for cheaper than buying that same disk on its own. The website https://shucks.top tracks the price of various disk drives, letting you know when there are good deals.
How does the replacing of a HDD work on btrfs? Like if one failed and I’m using Debian, how do I rebuild the raid 1?
Or should I use an actual raid os?
Assuming that the disk is of identical (or greater) capacity to the one being replaced, you can run
btrfs replace.https://wiki.tnonline.net/w/Btrfs/Replacing_a_disk#Replacing_with_equal_sized_or_a_larger_disk
I second this. I use BTRFS over ZFS for its reduced footprint but has always been very reliable. With a couple of commands I replaced a disk and btrfs scrub on a monthly basis makes me sleep peacefully (relatively)