Hybrid NAS

[Enquiries]

Hello, I have a DS220+ and will probably have to build my NAS but wanted to put a feeler out. Thanks for being here. Very kind. I have interest in something more robust than the Zima2. Something with pcie lanes I can use with M.2 and Sata capabilities. The reason for the pcie is to have flexibility, with the use case emerging from what kind of connection to ethernet I have. I'd like the ability for my computer to talk with the NAS at 10g ethernet speeds. If the NAS comes with that option than the pcie will be used for say a nvme expansion card or u.2. I have an Epyc system with 2x3090 and as you might guess I am learning about local LLM development mainly persistent memory hence the desire for large amounts of storage. I'd like it to kind of be like a library for the LLM, but also have my own storage partitioned out. Probably TMI but thanks for reading. Looking forward to your reply.

[ed]

Thanks for the message. Based on what you want to do, a prebuilt NAS will not give you the flexibility you need. For your budget and use case, the best option is a small DIY hybrid box built around a used workstation or microserver. This gives you proper PCIe lanes for a 10G NIC or NVMe expansion, plus SATA ports for large capacity drives.

A very good fit in your price range is a used Dell T40 or an OptiPlex 7080 tower. Both give you a full PCIe slot, multiple SATA ports, and room for several drives. You can run TrueNAS Scale or UnRAID, use NVMe for apps or fast workspace, and keep a large HDD pool for your LLM library and personal data. Add a cheap 10G card and it will talk to your main system at the speeds you want.

This will feel much more robust than anything like a Zima2, and you can expand storage easily later. It also integrates well alongside your Epyc system for keeping models, embeddings, and datasets in one place.