Help with choosing hardware for a basic home storage server

TrueNAS General
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Hi all,

It has been a while since I have put together a parts list and built a server and the dizzying array of hardware options are making my head spin.

I currently have a low-end 4 bay QNAP NAS which works fine (although a bit sluggish even just for backup tasks) but I am getting more concerned with data integrity and it doesn’t have ECC or ZFS etc. It is also just a bit of a pain to use.

I was wondering if anyone might provide some advice on motherboard, CPU and Ram for a new TrueNAS Scale build that is focused on low-power draw and high levels of data integrity, but which does not need top end performance? Some more info:

  • For home use. Will service a maximum of 5 computers and a couple of Iphones and be used to store backup data only (family photos and videos, kids school/homework, small business data, personal administration and records etc). Won’t be serving live video, transcoding, calculating blockchain solutions etc. I just need a super reliable backup and recovery vault that is powerful enough to do the task without complaint. Won’t be exposed to the internet - home network use only.
  • Only need Gigabit ethernet (supporting cabling run through the house), but happy to future proof to 2.5 or whatever.
  • Small form factor (mini-itx seems like what people use for that now?), unless there are power/cost considerations in using a different form factor?
  • ECC
  • Quiet if possible (noting the drives will have their own noise but not much I can do about that)
  • I have 4 x 8TB Ironwolf drives already. I only have about 6TB of data all up - what would the best ZFS configuration be? Can be convinced on getting another drive or two if there is a better configuration for reliability that needs more drives.

I’m guessing I will need some sort of flash storage (or mirrored flash storage) to run TrueNAS from, and a decent power supply. I have a UPS already.

But I am definitely most confused with what Motherboard, CPU and Ram I should consider getting that work together to achieve the above requirements, particularly given all the options available and the want for ECC.

Thanks for any help!

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If you want to buy, ready to go, look at the iX Systems Mini line.

There have been multiple posts on small systems lately, just browse the forums and make sure you hit the Resources category to learn about ZFS and a lot of your other questions.

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Pointer to Atom C3000 (Supermicro A2SDi) or good old Xeon D-1500 (X10SDV).

Faster than Gigabit is 10GbE, not 2.5GbE or 5GbE.

That depends on how many drives you want to use (X10SDV: 6 SATA; A2SDi: 8 or 12) and of further extensions.
There’s much more to choose from in micro-ATX size, but mini-ITX is possible if you understand the limitations.

Raidz2 for reliability, possibly relying on raidz vdev expansion.

As stated, your needs would be met with a X10SDV or A2SDi board in a Node 304 case (6 drives), for which @Stux has an excellent build thread in the old forum. If you’re in Europe, the cheapest option here (with some tinkering) is actually a Gigabyte MJ11-EC1.

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Still going strong, now running Scale bare metal, with 6x 22TB Iron Wolf Pro

And then there is this thread:

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