I'm a long time Windows Home Server user, and I'm finally about to EOL my server "Columbia". I'm currently in the process of acquiring the hardware to build the new server "Leviathan", and have been testing various implementations of server software in VirtualBox. After much fiddling, I've decided on OMV. With that being said, I've also identified various plugins that will help me replicate my WHS experience for my user (my wife!) so she doesn't have to learn too much new stuff.
That being said, I'm having trouble figuring out file system/pooling/parity solution to choose. So I figured I'd ask.
I plan on starting my server with 5 x 4TB drives and the design of my server has space for future total of 15 drives. I'm planning on reserving 2 drives for parity. I want to be able to add drives of various sizes (whichever is on sale/reuse some of the drives from my WHS - they're 2TB), and I want to be able to incrementally grow my storage. i.e. - I have the original 5 x 4TB drives, add in 4 x 2TB from my WHS, if I start to run out of space and 8 TB drives are on sale? etc...
Because of this, I'm moving away from a traditional RAID solution, since I don't want to be limited to the smallest drive as I grow (nor do I want to fiddle with multiple partitions on one drive).
Fundamentally, I'd like some sort of JBOD solution that allows expansion of the array, and expanding with different size drives. I'd also like some level of data replication/parity, so that with up to 2 drive failures - I lose minimal to zero data.
I've looked at Greyhole, unionfs, mergerfs, etc and can't seem to really tell pluses/minuses and what is the best solution. SnapRAID looks like it might be the only solution for the parity portion, but if there's a better idea - I'm all ears. Thanks in advance!