The ULTIMATE NAS.

As avid readers might know, I've been trying to find the ultimate NAS build, be it new or old. 

So far I've tried N6005 boards from AliExpress (with the dreaded i225 network interface, which keeps hanging) HP Microservers (with a limit of 4 dirves), a DL350 G9 (which I hoped would carry 3.5" and 2.5" drives, boy was I wrong.

So I've always searched for way to get a simply unlimited number of drives, for very little money.
This was way out of the question, and still I thought was very limited in terms of number of drives.

I think I have stumbled upon the 'perfect' NAS with some possibilities of running docker containers and 10Gbit ethernet at the same time.

It consists of an MD3220 chassis (24 slots for 2.5" drives), make sure to get it with the SAS controller, it's much cheaper.:

 a SAS cable:

A Lenovo Tiny P340 of the 10th Gen (Intel)

A PCI riser card for the Lenovo Tiny P340 (and slot plate, optional)

A SAS card:

A couple of Drive cages:

A serial cable and USB>Serial converter:

So, as you can imagine, the SAS controller fits into the P340, you just need to cut a nice hole in the slot-plate (measure 2x cut once). Then you connect the serial cable to controller 0, using this site as your guide:
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/fun-with-an-md1200-md1220-sc200-sc220.27487/

Then, using the script suggested, you can reduce the noise output of the fans (down to 10%, and you can even keep an eye on the temperatures, to increase when needed.

At 10% fans I am at 51.8-52.1W with one controller (non-redundant) without any disks. Disks add wattage of course. But if you use 8Tbyte Samsung QVO drives, each one takes 10mW in standby:

In terms of performance, when filled with a number of drives, I am getting around 2Gbytes/sec of throughput which is the maximum the 4x 6-SAS connection can deliver.

I have also purchased one of the new USB-C 10Gbit RTL8159 adapters. In theory, the USB present on the 10th gen i7 should have enough bandwidth to get around 9gbit/sec:

So for just about 1000 Euros you can get a 24-drive NAS, no janky wires, all nicely connected. Good luck finding drives, but at least you can fit SAS drives now too, just no NVME drives yet ;-) 

By the way, if you go for an 7th gen i5 P340, you can have a NAS, that already includes the Intel quicksync video-re-encoding that's so useful for Plex (that brings the price down to around 650 Euros for the whole set (excl drives):

 

I managed to get a P360 i7 10th gen stacked with 2x 1Tbyte of internal drives and 64Gbytes of memory, as I intend to run some docker workloads too.

One optimization I could still imagine is a 'power stealer' where I take the 12V supplied to the drives and power the 19V Lenovo, The i7 10th gen needs around 200W maximum, it could be done:

I also tested the consumption of the MD3220 chassis with one power supply connected and one controller (no disks), that was 34.4W! Not bad for something capable of holding 24 disks

Robert.