OMV does RAID with Snapraid and MergerFS. You can also do ZFS RAID by changing the kernel to a proxmox type I believe.

One system here hosts a ZFS RAIDZ2 array, so 2 spare drives to recover from drive failure. It was the cheapest ZFS arrangement I could create and still maximise disk space. The access is through shares on the array and thats how they're separated. i.e. separate shares for media, photos, my stuff, their stuff. ZFS is used here for long term data integrity, hopefully.

The other system is a set of different sized disks (formatted as BTRFS) in a JBOD arrangement on OMV with a MergerFS pool that puts all the drives into one mount point, the pool containing all the data across all of the disks. That array is accessed through a share on the pool having individual folders.

Unlike a RAID array this does not have any data parity disks so you can use all of the available disk space. If one disk is failing or fails you just loose that disk and not the whole JBOD array. MergerFs, in OMV at least, has a facility to copy a failing disks data to the free space on the MergerFS array or elsewhere, allowing a new disk to be inserted and integrated without loosing the data.

I think thats kind of neat and it allowed me to use up all the spare disks of various sizes that I has lying around. Data integrety isn't so important for me in this case. Space was the motivation. I'm looking forward to a day when ZFS can do the same thing.

A backup is likely needed for both of the above.

Frugal and recycled. Using a mix of old disks in OMV8 with a mergerfs array, suprisingly they amounted to 20TB, so saved a few bob.

If a disk fails in Mergerfs you loose the data on that disk only and not the array as you would with a pure jbod array.

There is a remove disk utility in the OMV8 mergerfs plugin that allows the data from a failing disk to be copied back to the array, if enough space is available, retaining the data from the failing disk. The disk can then be physically removed. If the array is short on space, add a disk to expand the array before removing the failing disk.

I've only ever used it with a failing disk, not a failed disk, I would guess that a backup would be required in that case.

The same applies to mergerfs outside of OMV8, this was easier for me.

Hardware - Start small and cheap. If you have it already use it. build it out as you need and understand it.

Software (OS) - Debian based perhaps. Docker probarbly.

Utilities - What would you like to do today? pick one, Pihole is useful.

Once you get something working for yourself, you'll start to build on that knowledge.

Above all be brave and be curious.

Apologies for the late reply. I'm not sure I can be very specific for you but here are a couple of thoughts.

Obviously what you get is dependent on your buying power, perhaps start with the game cube specs and work on a budget around that initially. See how well it fits in with your research into components and their prices. Obviously set your budget and then add 10%-20% to cover unforseen costs :o)

Have a good look at what other people are building and see how the builds might fit your needs, youtube, hardware unboxed for example, the reviews in PC part Picker and various websites and forums, it will help you set a budget. You will also need to gen up a bit on hardware component functions and prices. Have a look at the component sellers websites and compare prices across a wide range of suppliers. It is worth doing the research. Definitely consider buying 2nd hand.

The type of games you play will affect the capability of your PC, so if you play the latest AAA games, you will need a better spec, but if you play older games or Indie games not so much.

AM4 and AM5 seem viable with current AMD support for both platforms, so you have a wide choice of CPU I think. I think AM4 and is more than adequate, in most scenarios but AM5 is newer. You could go intel with Linux if you're buying new, again needs the research, it might be more budget friendly and fit between AM4 and AM5 performance wise. If the drivers are not in the kernel, they should be easily obtainable.

Motherboard wise, look for something with solid VRM and the facilities that you'll need. Check to see that the MB you get does not throttle the CPU when it gets hotter under load. If its not a problem for you then you can buy cheaper.

Storage and RAM have gone up in price. You don't need to go for anymore space or memory performance than you need. e.g. the sweet spot for AM4 memory used to be about 3600Mhz. That figure is higher for AM5 memory, about 6000Mhz I think, but you can use 5600Mhz or 4800Mhz happily without noticing it. Sometimes the difference in performance is marginal and not cost effective.

You would need 16Gb RAM, maybe 8GB initially, depending on what you run, and then see how it goes.

Linux has a small footprint, so you may get away with gigabytes of drive rather than terrabytes, store your game files on an external drive perhaps.

You could get an RX9700XT or a plain RX9070 both with more than 10GB Vram, and both capable of 1440p. The 9070 because its performance is slightly less than the 9070XT but still capable of some raytracing. Intel GPUs have the VRAM you want so they might be worth a look, just make sure that Intel drivers support the games you play. Other 2nd hand GPUs are available.

I don't know about a TV with 4K at 1440p but I imagine that the bigger it is the better the text. When I changed my monitor from 1080p to 1440p the text got smaller on the same size screen.

HTH

edit, confusing VRAM with VRM

Not your scenario really but a HBA will allow you to use SATA and SAS drives. Gives a bit more flexibility on price, especially with 2nd hand SAS drives.

My drives are currently in a box supplied by wires hanging out of the PC (Server!) casing but it would look much neater with a 4 bay hot swap cage built for the purpose.

I just wish I could get the full 12 Gb/s out of the couple of SAS drives I use :o(

It needs to be controlled to make a profit. Once something you love becomes popular the bulldozers will move in.

Home network. The most fun was setting it up and finding out about ZFS, ymmv.

No multiusers, so I use a simple vpn to connect to my services from outside.

Apps use NAS ip address:Port and are easily viewed in a browser once installed.

I don't need much else so I install services as they catch my interest. Tried Tailscale, now looking at NetBird which might be the way forward as they now have a reverse proxy for testing.

Anything else is a bit too complicated for me to maintain.

I needed somewhere to plant files while I reconfigured my ZFS NAS from raidz1 to raidz2 and added an extra drive to compensate for the loss of space. Suprisingly I got away with it!

Mergerfs is quite useful. Now I have a lot of occasional spare storage and somewhere to put snapshots until I can save up for a proper backup drive.

I've tried Snapraid but we didn't get on, I never got the hang of it and lost data as a result.

I think you can use different size disks with ZFS if you use raid10 for the pairs, but the cost would be to high for me. Did I read somewhere that they were working on a way to use different size disks? That would be useful.

Just to add, I'd like BTRFS to be brilliant, so much interesting potential, but I read its deemed safer to use raid10 rather that any variant of raid5. if you're ever faced with having to rebuild the array, as others have mentioned. Single use is ok as far as I know.

I built a franken-server from some bits awhile ago using old disks of different sizes.

The disks were formatted individually with BTRFS (Mostly any FS would do) and then a mergerfs pool setup across all the drives. I got full use of all my old drives. Sizes varied between 1TB and 6TB, gave me 20Tb of usable space.

Mergerfs has no redundancy and no parity although it is designed to work with snapraid.

If a drive is lost only the data on that drive is lost, you just need to replace that one drive, the data on the other drives remains intact. The loss of a drive in a Raid0 or JBOD array, results in the loss of the whole array and all the data.

Some sort of backup is probarbly appropriate.

https://trapexit.github.io/mergerfs/latest/

Might be worth a look.

Thinkpad T420, i5-2520M, 8Gb RAM, 2 x 1TB SATA SSD, 1 x mSATA and a mmc card. Some usb storage plugged in for good measure.

It was bought 2nd hand for children to use, then workshop laptop, eventually retired as occasional NAS space running OMV 8 (Debian Trixie).

I expect it to just work forever.

KDE on Manjaro - The Wayland update caused issues with programs that I used and had depended on for years. I struggled to find suitable replacements or workarounds for the features I was comfortable with on X11.

I experienced random lockups and sound issues, displayport would reset now and again. I worked with these issues until I got fed up and reverted to X11 in the login screen after installing plasma-x11-session and kwin-x11. Everything works as it used to, for now.

This experience made me want to look for alternatives to KDE, I'm not ready for Wayland.

Incidentally, does Wayland have an alternative to X2GO apart from RDP?

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