Revisiting the Storinator JR Concept — A Compact NAS for the Modern Homelab

General
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Hi 45Drives Community,

With a background of IT for over 20 years, I’ve been more and more active in the homelab space over the last few years, working with a variety of partners including Western Digital, Kingston Technologies, IceWhale, Zettlab, and DeskPi — all with a focus on bringing high-performance, cost-effective storage and compute solutions to the home lab environment.

While my setups have generally leaned toward compact, lower-power NAS and server builds, I’ve always had a real appreciation for what 45Drives brings to the table — especially in terms of open design, community engagement, and the ecosystem around Cockpit tooling. I regularly use parts of the 45Drives Cockpit suite for managing drive arrays and folder shares in my current builds.

One project that’s stuck with me is the Storinator JR — the smaller-scale NAS concept that was previously explored with Jeff G. I feel like it’s time to re-open that conversation, especially considering the progress we’ve made in embedded systems and modular storage hardware. I’m currently prototyping something in that spirit and would love to get your feedback, suggestions, and thoughts on the direction.

Current Build Concept:

  • Board: ZimaBoard 2.0 (rear I/O layout)
  • HBA: Dual-port internal SFF card (model TBD)
  • Backplane: IBM 46W9187-02 — 8-bay 2.5" SAS/SATA backplane (originally for x3650), floor-mounted (need to buy this still)
  • Power: 12V 10A PSU
  • Connectivity: Breakout cable from ZB2 to power backplane
  • Chassis: 3U rackmount case (likely 3D Printed
  • Boot Drive: Vertically mounted SSD
  • Cooling: Dual 80mm front intake fans

This is still very much in the “mad scientist lab” phase. I’m testing fitment, power distribution, airflow, and compatibility between components (as they are what i have laying arround here). The end goal is a compact Storinator-style NAS that could offer:

  • x86 hardware & dual 2.5gbe
  • Support for 6–8 hot/warm-swap 2.5" drives
  • Open-source OS with Cockpit integrations
  • Rack-mountable form factor for shallow-depth homelab racks
  • Minimal power draw, low acoustic profile

While it’s not intended to compete with the traditional Storinator lineup, I think there’s a real opportunity here to fill a niche for those of us running smaller setups — a “baby Storinator,” if you will.

I’d love to hear what the community thinks — especially from anyone at 45Drives who was involved with the original JR design. Would there be interest in reviving a community-led project around this concept? Anyone already building similar setups?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!

Best,
Sabitech

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As a one-off project that seems fine. For the “Storinator Jr” concept, I’d have some questions, mainly around use case and what the appeal of the Storinator brand is to people (for me personally it’s not their full builds and Cockpit).

One problem with physically small builds like this, is that you’re typically pairing a lower-powered CPU (instructions per second, PCIe lanes, addressable RAM) with fast SSD/NVMe storage technology. So, if your NAS is just doing storage your CPU is fine but you are over-paying for the SSD capabilities to get it’s small size. If you want your NAS to also do containers and VMs then you have the fast SSD for it, but you have a weak CPU.

I would agree that a small form factor system with a number of SSD/NVMe drives would probably have a market. The competition would seem to be;

  • TerraMaster F8-SSD Plus
  • Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X
  • QNAP TBS-h574TX
  • and maybe others now

I think some version of those that was open-source out of the box and didn’t have to be hacked at to load an OS other than the manufacturer’s would have a market. I think the world is moving to NVMe, but 45Drives certainly has 2.5"-drive backplane technology.

Depending on the backplane dimensions and case material, you can do it in 2U if the drives are front loading with their short edge vertical.

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Thanks for the input.
As you say there are some other options on the market but none are rack mountable by design. of course you can use shelves etc. but a lot of those are using m.2 nvme rather than standard SSD / SATA drives.

For me it’s a combination of style, function and form factor. I dont use VMs at all in my production, its pretty much all LXC or Docker and the resource use is minimal.

Cockpit has been instrumental to my uses for file and disk management. Sure there are options like TruNAS / other ‘NAS’ based OS it’s a lot of options and choice out there.

I know a lot of those vendors like to lock their systems down too (in my experience) so having a more open source option is beneficial. I guess i might have to look at some of those options to see what their lockdowns are.

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