Which drives to use in a server

[MassiveJim]

Running a small business with 2 users in an AD environment, using a total of 4 machines. (occasionally boot a spare one up making this 5)

Server is a 2nd hand Dell R720 (3.5" edition, so max of 8 physical drives can be installed)
4 VMs
1 - AD/DCHP/DNS, server 2012 R2
2 - File server, 2012 R2
3 - Backup server, 2012 R2
4 - W10 Pro for always on remote access to the network

host is hyper-V running of 2 x 15k SAS drives in RAID1
all vms are stored on this drive,

file server main network shared drive vhd is stored on a RAID10 array of 4 x 300GB 15k SAS Drives with a hotspare
Backups all go to an 8TB WD Gold SATA Drive (also includes a full offsite backup for my home as well, hence the larger size)

I am using roughly half of the RAID10 storage array
there is approx 80GB free on the VM Array
approx 1.5TB free on the WD Gold drive

Ideally I want to start increasing the size of some of these drives but I definitely cannot afford new prices and not sure if I can trust 2nd hand ebay drives, that being said I don't even know if actually need SAS drives for the environment I am using them in.

Could I get away with WD Blacks/Golds for example for the RAID 10 ?
I have a limited understanding of the benefits of enterprise SAS SSDs over consumer, but not entirely sure in my use case I would feel the disadvantage of using consumer drives.
So could I use (for example) Samsung Evo/Pro SSDs ?

If someone with a little more knowledge on the subject could fill me in I would be most grateful.
Thanks

 

[MassiveJim]

You should be able to use SATA drives fine as I understand it. I'm not sure you would feel any disadvantage either by going consumer.

Is there a particular aspect of performance or use of the the shared file space that you're needing to meet? i.e. are you editing video files off it etc, or is it just a file respository of stuff and documents and pics etc that the users access as they need to ? If the latter, then are you needing all out performance ? not really I would say, its just a shared space used in a similar way a standard HDD in a desktop would be used, so desktop drives would likely be fine. If so:

Then for £40/ea you can get 7.2k 1TB WD Blues from OC at the moment. That would triple your space for £160 all in - which is approaching half the price of the WD blacks.

Seperate to that, it reads as though you have the backup for the server + backup for your home on the WD Gold drive ... in the server. If the server goes down the pan and wrecks itself, or there is an accident at the premises... then does everything get lost ?

I'd say you really ought to be having a backup off site option in some capacity.

Yes it is just a file repository also all AD Profiles are on the server.

In terms of backups, the backup for the machine itself is local (to the WD Gold drive), all files are backed up to my home NAS daily as well.
So if the server completely died and took every drive with it then I would have all business files stored at home and able to recover from there.
But I would need to install all machines from scratch again I guess, but it would have to be a really bad day for me to lose the server and all drives at the same time ?