Feedback on my planned NAS build (Xeon + ECC)

TrueNAS General
1

Hello Guys,

First of all, apologies for yet another “Look over my Hardware” post.
But, i hope i did my research extensively enough, and it seems like you are a community who likes to welcome newbies like me.

Background of me:

  • I have build a gaming PC once before with my friend, but didnt do the part research
  • Full time Android / Typescript Developer on windows

Purpose of my build:

  • NAS for home usage - just storage for photos, videos, documents
  • Nextcloud for my family ( 4 )
  • As energy efficient as possible while also being pretty budget efficient

Components i have

  • 120GB SSD i want to use as a boot disk
  • old 2 TB HDD ( maybe for cold spare )

Requirements/Considerations

  • no SLOG, no L2ARC
  • At least 1GbE, better would be 2.5
  • 16 GB ECC RAM
  • raid z2, 4x2TB or 4x4TB
  • If possible, a motherboard with 6 SATA ( so i can avoid HBA)
  • Tailscale

Before moving on, i know there is a post with almost the exact hardware i am looking into, but that didnt get much attention and is over a year old, so i chose to add this post.

Also, at the time of writing this, i dont have the parts in front of me, so i cant give more detailed information about them

Components i want to get ( 120 € together )

  • Mainboard: ASUS P10S WS
  • CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245 v6
  • RAM: 16GB DDR4
  • PSU: iPower 550W 80+ Gold
  • SSD: Crucial 120GB
  • HDD: Seagate 1TB
  • Case: (probably) ASUS TS100-E10-PI4 or i could get an Fractal R6 for 80€

As i never build a NAS and dont have much experience in part picking, i would be more than happy to hear any improvements to my planned build.

  • Should i invest in a HBA to use 6 HDDs?
  • Is it worth using the two SSDs for a mirrored boot disk setup?
  • Should i invest in a better Quality PSU?

My Plan

  • Build the NAS end of this month ( 08/25 )
  • Test the Disks and RAM a month
  • Install TrueNas and Nextcloud
  • Configure TrueNas to only be accessible from my home network, but nextcloud to be accessible from everywhere via my domain and Tailscale
  • Do Manual Backups of the pool onto the two old HDDs / my external two HDDs

As the configuration and setup of backups etc. is still a while away, i think asking questions about the software side is a bit too early.

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No and no. You already have 8 ports onboard: Use them. Mirrorred boot is little to no use for home: Keep a copy of the configuration file (you may install @joeschmuck 's Multi-Report to receive it in your mail); in the rare case of boot drive failure, install anew on another drive and load the configuration.

No idea about iPower. I personally prefer to go for Seasonic, or failing that at least Corsair or some reputable brand.
As for the case, you may also look for a complete second-hand Xeon E “workstation” (Asus, Dell,Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo) and have everything pre-built. As long as the case can take 4 hard drives, it’s good to go.

What’s the purpose of the 1 TB HDD?

Important: Check that your hard drives are not SMR. SMR is not suitable for ZFS, especially raidz#.

No improvement to suggest, and certainly not at this price point. Congratulations! Your list basically tick all boxes—save for IPMI.

1 Like
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Not worth it.

You can use the 2TB HDD as a non-ZFS storage for quick backups or extra space for unimportant projects and data migrations.

4

As some folks have mentioned; no need for the 2TB cold spare, make sure drives aren’t SMR (those capacities have a risk of being SMR & it will eventually cause serious problems).

Since your motherboard has 8 sata ports, you plan to use 6 for your pool, 1 for boot drive, I’d argue it would be good to use 1 for your apps (and possibly future vms) with an ssd.

5

Thank you so much!
I feel very confident and i am excited to get my system up and running.

As for the Power supply, i decided to spend some more euros and get a Seasonic unit ( Maybe SeaSonic FOCUS or if i have money left, PRIME )

No purpose, i forgot to remove it in my post. Can get the Case+HDD+SSD together for a good price.

Yes, thank you. I will probably Buy a WD Red Plus NAS drive in a few different stores to be extra sure about not having them from the same batch.

Is it possible to configure TrueNas Scale such that the 2TB Disk isnt in the pool ( sorry if i get the terms wrong) but is a standalone disk where backups are automatically written to?

I dont plan on using a VM, but what do you mean by using one SSD for apps? I plan to use nextcloud on TrueNas Scale, do you mean nextcloud could then be installed on that seperate SSD? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use that space for a backup HDD and put the apps on the boot SSD, since there is probably enough space for that?

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boot drive is for boot exclusively - it exists for no other purpose. It is possible, though not recommended, to force things other than boot onto it. This can (likely eventually will) cause issues.

Separate drive for apps and/or future vms imo vs having them on spinning rust.

7

Same here, never heard of this one before. Reputable names are as @etorix mentioned above. I’m running Corsair RM750 and I know it is overkill for my NVMe system, but one day I may add some spinners (LOL, Right!).

I see a lot of folks telling you to check that your drives are not SMR. Funny thing, I just completed updating the SMR check script for Multi-Report. The script also can be run on it’s own. Here is a link to pull it from Github. All it does is compare drive model numbers to a known list of SMR drives.

You need to define a few things which are very important:

  1. Thinking about the next 3 years minimum (why 3 years? Because a drive warranty is 3 to 5 years), what is the storage capacity you expect to need. I usually tell people to double that. Two reasons to double it: you will put more “stuff” on the system just because you can, AND because ZFS likes room to write it’s data. If you spin up iSCSI, you need ~50% free space or performance is likely to suffer. If you hit 90% with a normal RAIDZ setup, the system will crawl.
  2. How important is your data? You need to factor in redundancy. If you choose high capacity drives, you will want more redundancy.

You are planning on using only 16GB RAM, that is the bare minimum I’d recommend for a basic NAS usage. If you could double that, you would not regret it.

The 10GbE you want, look for a motherboard with it built in, it will save you some grief later on.

It sounds like a low power CPU would be fine for the intended usage, but if you do this, you may be limiting anything CPU intensive so this goes to knowing your use case.

While the Asus WS is a decent motherboard, it isn’t a server motherboard. Surf the internet more. Surf the forums here for a system someone is using, ask them what they would do different. You might be amazed at the help you can get if you show interest in them, even though we all know it is self serving as well.

Let’s talk what is consumable and what isn’t.
Consumables: Fans, All Drives!
Non-Consumables: Motherboard, RAM, CPU, Power Supply, Case.

Why did I just do this? Because you need to understand that the non-consumable items are generally going to outlast your needs, buy good quality items, you will be living with them for a while. You could replace your hard drives 3 times (15+ years) and still have all those non-consumable items working.

When you test your RAM, run MemTest86+ for several days if you can. Just let it run. Run a CPU stress test as well for 4+ hours. I know people who run these tests for a full month, but that is for production work.

Hope these comments have you thinking.

2 Likes
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Yes

Don’t do it. It’s not worth the effort or risk.

Using a standalone 2TB drive in a ZFS NAS server to hold backups or important data, is like using cheap paper to print amazing photographs on an expensive printer. It makes more sense to use the cheap paper for something else.

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More PCIe slots - my biggest regret is TWICE deciding that I “want something small & purpose built”. Now I just want something that can keep up with feature creep. :frowning:

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I will definitely take a look at your script ( But also be really careful when buying).

After a bit of thinking, the 50% free space does make sense, so i probably will buy 6 4TB HDDs to use 16 TB in raidz2.

Thanks again for your input. As this is my first ever build i wont have the perfect hardware - but it doesnt need to run 24/7 and i am quite sure about what i want the system to be ( definitely wont regret that, right ). I can always build a massive NAS later if i really want to go down the self-hosting rabbit hole.