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Qestions about eSATA vs USB3.0 for a drive enclosure connected to Proxmox (self.homelab)

submitted 1 year ago by AlphaAutist to c/[email protected]

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I am trying to figure out the optimal way to connect an 8 bay drive enclosure to a Dell Optiplex 7040 Micro. The end goal is to have the drives made available to a Proxmox cluster and kubernetes cluster. This is all for learning experience as well as to run services for personal use.

The cluster will be made up of 2x Optiplex 7040 and 2x Optiplex 3040. All have i7-6700t CPUs, the 3040s have 16GB DDR3 and 1TB SATA SSD each, and the 7040s each have 32GB DDR4 and 2TB NVMe drive with an additional empty SATA port on the motherboard. The enclosure is a MediaSonic ProBox with USB3.0 and eSATA interfaces available

I have heard that you shouldn’t use USB to connect to storage so I have been trying to figure out a way to use eSATA even though the Optiplex does not have an eSATA port. I found some SATA to eSATA cables on eBay, would that enable me to connect the enclosure directly to the free SATA port on the Optiplex?

Would this setup work? Is it worth it to sacrifice the additional SATA port on one of the 7040s in order to avoid using USB? I would like to maximize stability and speed.

I have not yet decided how I want to configure the drives but was planning to look into either a ZFS pool or ceph. All drives in the enclosure will be for media storage (movies/tv/music, was planning to keep pictures and documents elsewhere) and passed to LXCs and kubernetes cluster I plan to run on Proxmox.

Any guidance on the connection setup, storage configuration, or my plans in general would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I would get a sata card. They are pretty cheap and are more reliable and flexible

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

1.) Yes, SATA to eSATA will work.

2.) It is not worth it, for stability. Having a cable from mobo to something outside case is unsafe at minimum.

I would go with the other recommendation: get a cheap pci sata/esata card. Cost is small, safety and reliability goes way up, no more kludge adapter going to inside of case.

[–] AlphaAutist 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well the issue is I do not think you are able to install one on the optiplex micro form factor. If you know otherwise I would appreciate the info

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, you are correct... then yes, sata to mobo, with something to secure that cable very well.

[–] AlphaAutist 1 points 1 year ago

Dang I was hoping you knew something I didn’t there haha. Thanks for your advice

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't know about "shouldn't use USB for storage;" it's perfectly fine. However, if you can use a SATA interface, I would. You'll get better performance in general from it, and that's what the port is there for.

[–] amniote 2 points 1 year ago

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.