NAS Help

[Enquiries]

Hi, thanks for your informative site and videos. My Drobo that was only for Time Machine backups died. Now that I see how much a NAS can do, over time I may add:

1. Plex or similar, mostly music, probably not much transcoding
2. A couple of security cameras
3. A couple of VMs for running legacy software currently on an old Mac and VMware Windows 10.

The Drobo had 5 x 3 TB WD Red SMR drives. While not recommended, they work so it would be nice to reuse them and add more or larger drives later. If better to replace please say so. ZFS is perhaps not right though. I am leaning towards Qnap’s openness but would consider Synology. RAID 6 would be nice.

Like everyone, I want everything but not to spend way more than I will ever need. Can you decipher my blather enough to offer suggestions? Amazon US has the QNAP TS-932PX-4G for $650 USD but perhaps that is too old.

Thank you!

[ed]

Yes, Qnap 923PX is super weak NAS. If you can, consider ds920+. It is good for multimedia and virtual machines.
It also allows drive mixing. It is not good to mix SMR drives. But you can still move them over, but create an additional RAID for extra drives. Or do replace them. With Synology, you can start with 2 drives in a 4 bay and add more later. SHR2 is like RAID6.
ZFS is indeed very resource-demanding system, Not for home.

I hope this helps.