I’m trying to plot out a home server build, and I’d like to do it in a rackmount form factor. Use case will likely be Proxmox running a NAS VM and some media services. For the NAS piece, I was thinking an enclosure with hot swap bays would be nice. Anyone have recommendations on the case/enclosure itself? I’ve seen this Rosewill one on Newegg (https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-l4412u-black/p/N82E16811147330), but struggling to find many other options.
I don’t have recommendations for a case but I would advise you to go with True NAS scale as it also makes virtual machines and is more open / less annoying than Proxmox.
https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/scaletutorials/virtualization/creatingmanagingvmsscale/
That’s interesting. I had thought of doing TrueNAS Scale as a VM running in Proxmox, but you’re suggesting have TrueNAS itself be the bare-metal hypervisor? What do you find annoying about Proxmox?
At that cost, you’d better buy a full Dell R720
I’ve got the 8-bay version of that case. Fans are surprisingly quiet, but the front grill/filter noticeably reduces airflow. Probably not an issue unless you’ve got GPUs installed. It’s not as convenient to work with as some of the true server cases, eg Supermicro, but it’s fine for a home rack.
Options without the lockable front grill will be cheaper. Sometimes it’s cheaper to put a hot-swap adapter in fixed mounting than use factory hot swap. Short-depth cases, if you’re not running a full-sized mobo or GPU, also cheaper. But rack mounting always comes at a premium, whether you’re choosing it for aesthetics or density.
I haven’t really ever found anything that checks enough boxes to make building my own in a chassis worth it, I run old Dell and Supermicro servers instead. The closest I have seen to what I want are these:
