I aquired some cheap used SAS drives and am trying to setup a NAS with them. Other than getting a small case, normal motherboard and a SAS controller, are there cheaper options? A low end 3-4 bay NAS that can do SAS? Preferably room for some nvme drives for a cache
You would likely need to build a NAS with a HBA (Host Bus Adapter). I’m not aware of any low-end NAS systems that support SAS