I'm not sure it's going to work like you hope it will. Your enclosure can run 'raid' but zfs doesn't like raid. As far as 'jbod' thru one esata cable...thats not how zfs likes it either.

Your best bet is to buy a m2/nvme to 5 sata port adapter so zfs can distinguish each drive. But then... the question is if your enclosure allows that.

I love mini pc's but for zfs there's not a lot of wriggle room. High end ones have dual nvme ports allowing for zfs mirror. Other than that you'll have to go said sata_nvme + an enclosure that powers all disks but allows for individual sata cables. It's gonna be clunky macgyvering too.

If I'm wrong I'll accept the flak.

First think about the storage setup and how you're gonna backup. The fruit thing comes later.

Jim Salter, the former mod of r/zfs ? Former Ars Technica ? Currently in the ' 2.5 Admins' podcast?

He's the hot knife of butter FS.

I bought a HP elitedesk G3 800 mini pc and managed to install an 'M2 to ethernet card' in the wifi port. Avoid HP G2 mini as they have a capacitator too close to the M2 wifi slot.

It's a bit macgyvering to secure it to the rear of the chassis though. You'll need 2 longer nvme screws and some hard plastic to secure it to the mobo.

Its supposed to be called betterFS but Jim Salter keeps calling it butter FS. Doesn't really inspire confidence. At least it's gonna need.. a better name

I respect that.

Just keep in mind that the storage part of any setup you consider is the hard part. It also involves backup, which should be high on your priorities.

As to Windows, l'm indebted to Bill for my livelihood... but for your testing, there is little value in virtualising windows OS: because you already know how Windows works. Go for linux instead, there's a lot more going on there. And you can run linuxes with a lot less ram.

Thats a lot of money. I just bought a HP elitedesk g3 800 midtower for €82, incl psu but without cpu, from a local refurb site. Slightly dented but bios updated to this years version and cleaned.. From ebay a €45 i5-7400 for 4c/4t as it can decode hevc 10bit for jellyfin. 32gig ram from ebay. 4 amazon SSDs I mounted in an icydock chassis that slots into the 5.25 bay. This is the expensive part, but its really clean and drives are ejectable like a rackserver. The chassis can hold 2 HDD for an additional zpool as well as an extra ssd. Also has an nvme slot for Proxmox OS and plenty of usb for Truenas style setups.

For €82 there is a lot of value in that chassis.

The top question on yer decision tree is :

is zfs part of it or not ?

If it is, you need either a midtower/nas case with a decent amount of sata ports - like 4 or more. Or install a HBA in a pci slot which implies again a midtower or enterprise server. So if you want ZFS .. all PI's and nuc/TinyMiniMicro's are out.

But you can do all the rest with them : linux, vm's, containers, reverse proxies, clustering.. you name it. Just know your backup strategy will likely involve rsync which is fine. But factor in backup in yer design from the getgo, not just an afterthought.

When a man balds at a young age, we say 'they were still shaving his mom when he was born'

Pretty brutal, eh ?

A million posts here on SBC's and nobody mentions all the work done over at Armbian ??

It's called taxes, don't worry.

In it for the long haul, its going to bathtub but we'll get there eventually