Case suggestion for home FreeNAS with 6 - 8 bays hotswapp

[Manitou]

Hi guys,

Since my raid storage is almost full and one of the HDD gets error often. I am going to upgrade/ expand the storage. I am finding a new case that support my HDD drives requirement as below. I would change the motherboard for SATA socket number and want to keep my CPU and memory if possible. Please give me suggestion and comments, thank you.

Case requirement:
6 / 8 Hotswap bays + 2 internal 2.5" bays (1 for VM storage + 1 for caching if need)
As small as possible
No need install display card (or just install a small one)

Prefer case:
1, CS-T80 - Hard to find
2, Silverstone CS380 - 2 x 5.25" is wasting space
3, Silverstone DS380 - No internal HDD space
4, U-NAS NSC-810A - To expensive


Current setup:

ESXi 6.7
CPU: i7-6700
Memory: 32GB
Montherboard: Gigabyte Z170N-WIFI
Case: Li Lian PC-Q08
Storage: 1 x 512GB SSD for VM storage, 5 x 3TB WD Red, 1 x USB for OS bootup

VM - FreeNAS
CPU count: 4
Memory: 8GB
Local storage: 8GB
Raid storage: Direct mount 5 x 3TB WD Red to form RaidZ
Usage: File storage for photos, movies, songs and TV shows, files.

VM - Plex server
VM - Deluge (BT server)
VM - Personal usage
VM - Backup server

 

[joeinaz]

One option is to find a case with six (or more) 5.25" front panel bays and add two or more "4 in 3" or "5 in 3" enclosures. The 4 in 3 drives come out of the system as whole disk not in caddy.

I have two examples:

Antec Mid tower with 4 in 3 enclosures

Custom Mid tower with 5 in 3 enclosures:

These include fans and show work with and system with at least six 5,25" front panels.