Help with my project

TrueNAS General
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Hi guys
I’m new with forums so don’t be angry about my English or useless or stupid questions.

First of all, I want to explain to you what’s my project.
I would like to create a home-made environment which allows my family and I (we live in different houses) to:

  • Backup all of our data (photos and videos) from smartphones &/or pcs
  • Create a Plex server (or alternatives) where we can play movies, GoPro videos and tv series in multiple devices (smartphones, tvs and PCs) with at least 2 simultaneous devices playing in 1080p 60fps or better in 4K 30fps
  • Sometimes play at videogames (cod, rocket league and so on)

This is the system that I’m actually using:

NETWORKING
My ISP provides me with 2.5 Gbps in Download and 1 Gbps in Upload but actually I have a gigabit standard router provided by my ISP (I live in Italy)
My parents have the same system as mine

BACKUP
QNAP TS853A with 8 HDDs (24TB Raid5)

GAMING PC
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
GPU: RTX 3070
MOBO: Asus ROG Strix b550 (2.5 Gbps port integrated)
SSD: Samsung 1TB
HDD: 1 TB

What am I actually doing right now?
Playing when I can at some computer games and backing up my family data (photos and videos) with the qfile pro smartphone app.
I used for a little bit Plex locally to watch at some movies but as you can imagine it’s undoable remotely.

Actually the NAS is super old and used and is super slow during all tipes of accesses and transfers: via web interface, via smb, via ftp, Plex and so on.(Yes, all hard disks are fine, smart tests done and already formatted)

I made some researches about installing freenas core or scale on my QNAP but many people discouraged me doing that.
So I was thinking about installing it on my PC with dual boot ( I was going to buy another SSD to dedicate it to Freenas boot) but also many people said that it was a very bad idea.
Then I was thinking to install Proxmox on my PC and creating 2 VMs (1 with windows and the other one with FreeNas) but, from what I could understand, it’s not doable because the GPU it’s not shareable and also could create some issues with anticheat systems during my gaming sessions.

I’m an IT technician and I would like to learn a lot from this experience and I’m not worried about making mistakes or spending some money to create this environment.

IT helpers from all over the world! Please help a brother to make a good and clean job :slight_smile:

( I forgot to say that I was also interested in implementing pfsense & nextcloud for sharing and in improving my network equipment to upgrade my speeds from 1 to 2.5 Gbps )

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Buy or find appropriate hardware to make a dedicated TrueNAS build. Alternatively buy or find appropriate hardware to run a hypervisor then run TrueNAS on that. If you want to go the route of virtualization be sure to read this resource:

TrueNAS is not an operating system, It’s an appliance. It’s, in my mind, meant to be something you have running 24/7. Doesn’t mean you can’t have it shut down at lengths of time, etc but I’d argue that kinda defeats the purpose of using it as a solution. I would assume most if not all NAS systems regardless of what software they run are the same in that regard. Same thing for Proxmox or any other hypervisor of choice.

I’m not sure I understand why using the QNAP is a bad choice? If you can install TrueNAS on it seems like a decent enough solution? Maybe someone can elaborate why it’s not a good idea.

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@mooglestiltzkin

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i’ve tested truenas scale on TS-253D, TS-653A and TS-877

it works on all of these models.

Whoever told you not to do it, why not? ask them this. they probably never even tried this themselves. if you are repurposing hardware already in your possession it isn’t pointless. but if you are out to get new hardware then ya i would suggest finding a different modern build more appropriate for truenas so less issues

When i switch from QTS to truenas, my SFP+ fiber optic 10gtek transceiver worked. So already there was a point to moving.

Also my nas did not have a ZFS option. But moving to truenas did the trick.

Then there is dockers. i can do jailmaker on truenas to then install a power efficient docker for 24/7 self hosting. so no longer do i need to walk around the quirks of how they deployed containers in QTS under the bonnet so to speak.

If your model cannot install an ssd, the way i did it was through a usb m.2 ssd nvme enclosure. This way i plug in via usb then installed my truenas on it and it boots from there. Imagine you can connect 2 of them and set it in a mirror.

There may be addon cards that MAY also support adding m.2 ssds to your nas. Though not sure if your model supports those or not.

I have a QNAP QWA pcie card that allowed me to piggy back M.2 sata onto it which i createda a mirror pool. But i was not able to install truenas to them as a boot drive unfortunately, no idea why.

853a might not be the best candidate for zfs compared to a more newer machine, but i think it’s still fine.

you merely need to meet the truenas spec requirements.

the only thing i have yet to resolve is fixing the lcd panel. but with know how someone could edit the script to get that to work, though i lack that technical know how.

but that is a minor issue. the nas more or less works, and i don’t see any downside.

yes i had to let the fans run at max speed, but that is still within my acceptable range.

skip core, go scale. ixsystems already peddling scale for their enterprise, it’s stable enough.

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If you followed my steps, you can also go truenas.

Also the way i did it, makes it possible to roll back to QTS if you change your mind later. I don’t remove the DOM. i simply go bios to disable it. So if you want to undo that, unplug the external usb that has the truenas installed on it, go into bios, reset bios. boot up, in qts update. now you are back to old qts. though no idea why you would do that unless you were selling your nas to someone else.

but basically the changes i propose are benign as you can easily roll back at anytime without harming the nas.

proof is, this is exactly what i did for the TS-253D, no issues. Why i did that was because i need to pair it to a TL-D400S to access hybridbackup sync to do my backups and restore data.

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there is another setup which is, instead of installing truenas, you install proxmox. then through proxmox you install truenas.

I never used this setup myself, but i heard it works. You can do your own research on that if you want.

The reason they said to go that route, is because the proxmox snapshots is way more powerful than truenas’ own or some such.

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I just setup a TrueNAS VM inside a TrueNAS VM inside a TrueNAS…

image

Not sure why you would bother layering another Hypervisor on top of TrueNAS when really TrueNAS + Jailmaker + a VM or two is all most people would need, tops.

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i don’t know either. but that is what they said :sweat_smile:

even my router i could have gone the proxmox route, but i preferred a bare metal approach. one less point of failure, also i had no plans to host multiple stuff from 1 piece of hardware.

i’m not shitting on proxmox, it’s a very good software. using 1 server to host multiple things via vm is very efficient indeed. we have come a long way to reach this point.

anyway here is the culprit for that suggestion
https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/1c91x7j/comment/l0ikwd8/

don’t shoot me, i’m just the messenger :sob:

also my experience with proxmox personally is nil :smiling_face_with_tear: so i am going by hearsay for it mostly.

TrueNAS + Jailmaker + a VM or two is all most people would need, tops.

yep this is exactly what i am using. Haven’t really touched the VM. Just only truenas + jailmaker (docker jail only) for now.

Maybe later if i decide to test linux desktop iso i may try the VM again to do so.

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Yah, but you’re bypassing the apps ecosystem by using jailmaker

And by having a separate docker compose/stacks and data datasets you can easily backup everything.

Performance/power usage will be best with truenas on metal and your services in a sandbox made with jailmaker

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Thanks for your answer my friend.
The issue here is that, even if i get to install truenas on my QS (which I think is doable), I’ll meet issues with the Plex server because the NAS has a really bad CPU for transcoding in 4K remotely to 2 devices…
I think that we should focus about “destroying” my gaming build and trying to focus on that machine.
I don’t want to spend so much money (1k € it’s my cap)

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As i answered to @mooglestiltzkin I NEED a plex server so installing it on the QNAP it’s the worst solution possible I think…

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you want to use it for transcoding 4k? well that will be limited by whatever cpu is on the ts-853a

Plex has a googlesheet that shows you what processing performance mark is required to do that.

I don’t see how switching OS will help you get better result for your live transcoding when the cpu remains the same

you can test with your current system see how it performs. there is your result.

whether you move to truenas or not is a separate matter to your transcoding issue which is dependent on your hardware to begin with.

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You can install plex as a docker using jailmaker on truenas no issue
https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/plex

whether your hardware can do 4k live transcoding is a separate matter.

if you are having issues with that, get a better server with the hardware for that purpose.

My only experience with live transcoding was with the ts-877 using plex for 1080p content. it can do it. 4k? i didn’t test.

Instead of transcoding these days, i simply use jellyfin, then the jellyfin player on my pc, then browse to my nas jellyfin then it streams (no transcoding needed).

so why do you need transcoding for? if you can playback without transcoding that would be best.

maybe someone else has a better answer for you :thinking:

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i was only answering whether you can switch qts to truenas or not for this qnap model. it can.

the other questions, i wasn’t really answering for that. maybe others can answer those separate concerns :sweat_smile:

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Yup, I know… that’s why I specified on my first post my pc hardware settings. I think that the RTX 3070 would be more than enough for transcoding in 4k. But as I said, I’m not an expert in this matter so I trust all of you guys.

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I need transcoding for playing remotely 4k films and GoPro videos

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Yeah I know and I thank You for that man! But I need a suggestion/solution for all the needs listed on my post :frowning:

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Plex NAS Compatibility - Google Sheets from the support.plex.tv

Found this nice spreadsheet on the Plex support site: Plex NAS Compatibility - Google Sheets

from: Category : NAS Devices | Plex Support

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https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/ql91cl/struggling_to_stream_4k_content_remotely_what/

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/17xhi1a/whats_needed_for_4k/

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when i was testing 1080p high bit rate live transcoding on ts-653a, it would stutter and stop while waiting before going again. start/stopping continously.

that will happen if your hardware cannot handle that :sweat_smile:

it’s a horrible experience.

so whenever i use something like plex, i opt for ways to bypass any transcoding and simply just play as is with a player that supports the video codec which does not trigger any transcoding. then you don’t have to worry about the performance of your nas as much.

but if you really need that, then i can’t help sorry :sweat_smile: