IBM disk sheild vs NAS build

[Bun-Bun]

Trying to decide between buying a 12 bay IBM disk shelf from a buddy and getting a raid card with external sas or building a custom nas box with a mITX board and connecting it to my computer via 10gb cx4 nic utilizing an iSCSI lun.

Disk shelf will be $500 plus I have to find some cheap caddy's for it and buy a $100 raid card on ebay. My fear with this is parts if ever required it will be expensive and hard to find. Plus I think zfs on a custom nas would be more robust and fault tolerable.

But will a custom built nas and iSCSI give me the direct attached performance I am looking for?

 

[thiggins]

The IBM unit is going to be a power hog and noisy, plus have the parts availability issue.

ZFS will be more fault tolerant, but at the expense of throughput.

If you want direct attached performance, go direct-attached.

 

[Bun-Bun]

The issue is I am trying to stay away from having large storage inside my computer case. Trying to make it external. Seagate 2TB LP drives give me the performance I need out of bulk storage. Trying to build an external solution that can match that.