July 2025 update

 

I currently have 4350 plots taking 430.5TiB spread between 8 harvesters. Current storage consists of:

  1. Main storage is a PC with 10 x 20TB drives running ZFS in raidz2 (1460 plots).
  2. Secondary storage is a PC with 7 x 8TB drives running ZFS in raidz1 (397 plots).
  3. Pi4 (4GB) plus 2 x 16TB USB drives running btrfs in single mode (280 plots).
  4. Pi4 (4GB) plus 2 x 16TB USB drives running btrfs in single mode (275 plots).
  5. Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running bftrs in raid0 mode (560 plots).
  6. Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs in raid0 mode (560 plots).
  7. Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs in raid0 mode (560 plots).
  8. Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs in raid0 mode (268 plots, filling up). 

Full node is an Intel I5-11000 PC with a U.2 enterprise SSD for work space (currently on its 3rd) plus a couple of M.2 SSD (boot drive, spooling drive). It has 128GB of RAM and a 10GbE NIC. Even the enterprise SSD's wear out.

As you can see I scale out the storage by adding Pi5's as a harvester with a QNAP TR004 holding 4 drives to store finished plots on. I have 2.5GbE USB network adapters. Network speed doesn't impact lookup times but makes a big difference when filling up each harvester.

Chia price has tanked recently so I don't think its worthwhile getting more storage or expanding the farm at the moment.

 

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