Advice for best way to approach my first TrueNAS build? And what to expect?

TrueNAS General
1

So I got the parts list down… and once I put it together I imagine the learning curve for a noob such as myself will be quite stress-inducing.

Any tips or best practices for this build?

What should I expect, realistically (in terms of stress / issues I’ll run into, etc.)

I will be running a vdev of 6 x 24 TB in RAIDZ2, in a Cooler Master HAF 922, and later adding a vdev in a 2-4 years (12 x 24 TB drives total)

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My use cases:

  • Automated weekly backup destination from all my other devices (PC, Homelab, Phones, Photos, etc)

  • Large video and music project storage (will back up to External Hard Drives and M-Discs. Long term plan to build 2nd offsite backup NAS)

  • Will be powered on as-needed (weekly backups, and to access larger video projects).

  • Will attempt to keep in room for now… likely move to garage if noise becomes too much. (Garage temps ~55F in winter and 80F - 95F in summer. Room and garage both higher dust environments).

  • I already have about 15-20 TB of data on various external hard drives, that I wanted to move to a central location. I do record a good amount of video on iphone, which eats up storage fast.

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Parts I will be using:

  • Case: Cooler Master HAF 922

  • ASRock B550 Pro4

  • Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G

  • 2 x 32 GB ECC UDIMM RAM (Kingston KSM26ED8/32HC 2666 CL19)

  • HDD storage: 6 x Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC580 24TB 7.2K RPM SATA 6Gb/s 512e 3.5in Recertified Hard Drive ($340 each)

  • HBA: LSI 9300-16i

  • 10 GbE NIC: Intel X550-T2

  • Noctua fans

    • CPU Cooler: NH-U12A ($120)

    • Case Fans

      • 1 x Noctua NF‑A20 PWM (intake (cool 5 x HDD’s)

      • 1 x Noctua NF‑A20 PWM (top exhaust) ← Do I even need an extra exhaust though?

      • 1 x 120mm Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM (exhaust)

    • HBA Fan: Noctua NF-A9 PWM ($20)

  • UPS: CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD ($199)

  • BDXL Drive: ? (Still searching for which is best)

  • PSU: Corsair RM850x (I already have this one laying around)

  • 3D Printed Adapter for extra 3 x 3.5" HDDs on Bottom Intake Fan

    • Or this mount which looks like it gives more airflow. But less support = more vibration?
2

The initial build looks like a good start, things I’d point out:

Garage - I have my servers in my garage (South England, UK); it’s not the most sealed in the world but I have air, moisture and humidity sensors as well just in case. Make sure you have good dust filters and clean them!!

Those recert drives, don’t assume they work - plug them in and actually test them :slight_smile:

Power-On When Needed - Not a fantastic idea and goes against best practice for hardware life; the turning off/on does actually cause physical thermal expansion in drives and can prematurely reduce their life. Drives and Computer Parts are designed to be on 24/7.

The ZFS Pool itself - Don’t install your second vdev in the future with a different width of drives (Just making sure I didn’t misread/understand when you said 12x24s!) Keep it as vdev1 6x24 and vdev2 as 6x24; which I’m 90% sure you mean but just making sure as I’ve seen people do some wacky width stuff before, and mess up their balancing.

The Case - I’d really recommend looking for an enterprise grade rack/server case to hold these, I have a fear that with your drives vibration in that 3D Mounted Kit will be amplified and again, risk premature rotational vibration damage - with the added physical movement jolts and thermal expansion risks of turning it on/off often.

More air flow is better than no airflow :wink: don’t forget heat rises
But yes, that HBA runs hot, as much airflow as possible, yeah it will make it louder but think about the free heating you’ll get out of it :smiley:

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In terms of actual CPU and RAM spec, should be fine, not sure what your real work load is in terms of real metrics etc other than what you described, but should be fine to start with, just a comment that ZFS loves RAM, so if you can, add more, but AI Datacentres aren’t exactly helping with RAM prices right now!

Anyway, good luck with the build and hope it works out :slight_smile:

3

Unnecessary for now: B550 can provide 6 SATA ports. When expansion times come, try getting, a -8i, a 9305-16i, or a 9400, all of which would run cooler than a 9300-16i.

Nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but massive overkill for a 4750G.

That depends on the case layout and airflow…
Thanks for the link, but it’s hard to tell from (outer) pictures how the internals work. And how they would work with extra drives hacked in.

4

I see you want to use this case with some 3D mounted adapters. As much as I love it (built my first PC in it; ran that case for 10 years), it’s not the best fit for that many HDDs.
If you want to still use it, maybe get something like a Inter-Tech ST-5255 and a Chieftec CMR-2131 (or similar).
Those will actually cool the HDDs and you can hot swap them.

With those you most probably wouldn’t need a top fan, just a rear one.

As @etorix said, as great as an NH-U12A is, it’s absolute overkill. Even an AMD box cooler would suffice here as I don’t see where any real CPU load would come from. It wouldn’t hurt though.