Building a Network-Attached Storage device can be an enjoyable project, regardless of whether you’re a casual user looking for a network-wide file-sharing and backup server or a tinkering expert who wants to experiment with different RAID configurations, network shares, and a host of other features. But if your NAS setup seems too underwhelming for your needs, you could scale this project up by designing a dedicated Storage Area Network for your home lab. If you’ve already built a NAS using TrueNAS Scale, OpenMediaVault, or another dedicated OS, you can follow these tips to transform it into a SAN system.

5 Add more (enterprise-grade) drives

And set up your favorite RAID configuration

Since SAN servers handle massive amounts of data, your typical 2-bay NAS won’t make the cut if you’re planning to create a hardcore storage solution. A larger drive pool not only offers greater capacity for video editing, archiving, media streaming, and other storage needs but also lets you work with RAID configurations.

Sure, simple RAID setups like Mirror (RAID 1) can provide decent results with just two drives, but you’ll need at least four drives to work with the more advanced RAID 6 or RAID 10 arrays. And the minimum number of disks required increases even further when you want to integrate the uber-powerful RAID 50 or RAID 60 arrangements into your SAN.

4 Use HBA controllers

Though you should be cautious about using hardware RAID

When you’re outfitting your NAS with multiple HDDs and SSDs, it’s easy to run out of SATA ports on your motherboard. Thankfully, you can put the free PCIe slots on your motherboard to good use with the help of Host Bus Adapter cards. There are also extender cards, which you can use in tandem with an HBA to massively increase the number of SAS and SATA drives you can slot into your system. Depending on your specific needs, you can even go for HBA controllers designed specifically for enterprise-grade Fibre Channel setups (more on that later).

However, there are some major issues with RAID-compatible HBA cards that you should be aware of before using it to build your SAN server. The software-based RAID provisions of ZFS pools have far surpassed the capabilities of dedicated RAID cards, at least as far as consumer-grade storage solutions are concerned. Worse still, if the RAID adapter kicks the bucket out of nowhere, you’ll have to deal with a lot of headaches when recovering the data.

3 Install faster NICs

Preferably more than one card for Link Aggregation/Multipath Input Output provisions

1 Gigabit may be a deal-breaker for the average NAS user. But once you start bringing high-speed RAID setups and lightning-fast SSDs into the mix, it’s no longer enough for SAN workloads. So, if you’re designing a SAN that doesn’t get bottlenecked by low bandwidth, it’s a good idea to invest in 10 Gigabit provisions.

Heck, even a single 10GbE NIC could turn out to be ineffective if you plan to use multiple devices with the SAN. That’s where Link Aggregation and Multipath Input Output come into play, as they use the extra physical connections to add improved load balancing capabilities and port failover provisions to your SAN. And if you’re particularly interested in block-storage protocols, you can ditch Ethernet NICs altogether and switch to Fibre Channel cards instead…

2 Switch to Fibre Channel equipment, if possible

That’s a big if when you’re trying to build a SAN under a budget

Although the ol’ reliable Ethernet has plenty of perks, Fibre Channel is definitely the better option for powerful SAN setups. Since Fibre Channel is a lossless protocol, you don’t have to worry about losing packets of data mid-transmission. Additionally, it has lower overhead compared to Ethernet and is more suitable for low-latency workloads.

That said, Ethernet is a lot more convenient than Fibre Channel. Switches compatible with the Fibre channel standard can be extremely expensive, making FC setups rather impractical for a makeshift SAN server.

1 Otherwise, iSCSI is your best friend

It’s good enough to run your entire game library off a NAS/SAN

Block-storage is central to every SAN configuration, and Internet Small Computer System Interface is one of the most cost-effective options for consumer-grade solutions. Not only can it work over Ethernet, but it’s a lot easier to set up on most operating systems.

Sure, it’s not as reliable or as performant as Fibre Channel. But for most non-enterprise tasks, a storage drive mapped using the iSCSI protocol will deliver satisfactory results, especially once you have a Multipath Input Output framework up and running. Plus, you can isolate your iSCSI traffic using separate VLANs to ensure your typical LAN traffic doesn’t conflict with your storage operations.

Should you turn your NAS into a SAN?

Well… it depends. If you want to put together a no-nonsense SAN setup without selling a kidney, I recommend grabbing a couple of extra HDDs and using some NICs to set up MPIO-powered iSCSI shares. Once you feel the need to slot in additional drives, you can start looking into HBA controllers and SAS extender cards. In case you’re still not satisfied with the SAN, you can start browsing Fibre Channel-compatible switches as a last resort.