I have not yet explored the likes of kubernetes, I don't have enough hardware. :D

I have old hardware running my unraid "mainbox", a 10c, 20T 10th gen intel with 128gb of ram, and a lot of spinning rust, and 2 m.2 drives for caching.

The most important data from that then goes to an ancient qnap I have, where it is mirrored two two seperate disks.

Then there's a nightly sync to a 10TB USB attached HDD. If the house is burning down, that's what we grab. It has every photo we've ever taken, every document we've ever considered important.

And then for the most critical stuff, there's an rsync offsite back up.

Because I primarily use my NAS as a store of photo stuff, my next one is likely to be all flash (and will need at least 2.5GB Ethernet) - but I will need to upgrade my router. The house is already wired with short runs of CAT6e, so I just need to upgrade the router, and maybe my switch.

The patch panel should be fine, but that was set up by pros when they did the PoE cameras for me. I am not a homelab "guy" or a sys admin by any means, I just pay enough attention to this stuff.