I wish to build a small NAS for home use. I mainly wish to store images and documents, some videos and the occasional system image. I plan to build a NAS with the capacity for 4 HDDs. Of these, I would populate two and use them in a mirror configuration. In a few years, when I need more space or the disks seem to show wear, I would buy two larger HDDs, which would be hopefully cheaper by then, and put them in the 2 free bays and transfer the pool to them.
A few questions:
Is the above way of expanding reasonable and easily achievable in Truenas scale?
If I want to create a significant gap between the failure times of the two disks then for the first mirror, can I start with one disk and add the mirror disk, say, after a year?
Should it be possible to proceed as in 2, then later when I plan to expand, can I again stagger the new disks by first replacing only the older disk in the mirror and then replacing the other after, say, 3 moths or so?
I understand that disks can fail during the staggering period, and it would be better to have a 3-way mirror then can I populate one of the two spare bays with a third disk of the same size as the others in the mirror after, say, 3 years? I would be removing this from the pool when shifting to larger disks and only adding its equivalent for the larger mirror after another 3 years or so. Is this reasonable and easy to do in Truenas?
Start with the Mirror of two disks. You can do a replacement of the original disks, one by one or by putting in the two, larger disks and having TrueNAS replace each smaller one with a new, larger disk. Then you can expand the space on the mirror pool. You don’t have to go transferring the data between pools. You keep the original pool.
Yes to all, although the idea of staying one year without redundancy negates the safety and integrity benefits of using ZFS. Use two drives from different manufacturers instead.
Since you are on mirrors you actually need not “transfer the pool”: You can replace the old drives with new drives and click a button to enjoy the new size.
I am considering this Full Tower Case with 7 fans and 12 disk bays. The MoBo I have chosen has 6 SATA 3 ports and 2x PCIE x16 ports. I could add an HBA to get upto 14 SATA ports which would allow me to use all 12 bays. However, please have a look at the datasheet with drawings of the case. Is it advisable to put 12 drives together in this case?
There is also the fact that the MoBo is limited to 32 GB. Leaving 8 GB aside for TrueNAS, that leaves 24 GB. According to the little reading I have done so far this would correspond to the system being able to handle storage up to 24 TB. This I feel should be achievable using 3 mirrored pools of 8 TB each. If this is not strictly the case, by how much can we safely stretch this limit?
If I choose to remain with the native 6 SATA, is it advisable to still go for this case, as I expect it will be airy and allow sufficient cooling, or is it better to go for a smaller case?
I would not go for that motherboard, 2 cpus but only 32GB?, nor that case. You don’t need much for a processor if only serving files, no apps, no VMs.
I would just plan for systems to get you 4 drives. Stick to mirror pairs as it should be easier for you to replace a drive or a set of drives than to replace all four if you went with Raid-Z2 of four drives. You don’t seem to be able to get hardware easily. You should keep it simple.
The hard drives must not be SMR, only CMR types. That is usually just in the NAS line from manufactures.
I made a mistake while reading the specifications. It supports 32GB per slot. One review mentions that it may be limited to using only 4 slots. I asked the seller and was informed that all 8 slots can be used. Trusting neither fully, it should be possible to get up to 128 or even 256GB of RAM.
The trouble is that motherboards supporting ECC memory are next to impossible to find here. I’ve also been trying to look for the Asus WS C246 PRO or the Asus P11C-X but, while it is listed with some sellers, they are out of stock.
In considering that Chinese ZX DU99D4 motherboard I was planning to use only one CPU.
I was thinking since it provides 6 SATA I could build 3 mirror pairs.
eBay is not an option as when the item passes through customs it gets almost doubled and there are other hassles.
I’ve been looking at options with the AMD Ryzen 5 3600. The Pro versions or even the X’s are extremely expensive. Only, the motherboards available are all gaming motherboards. There is some mention on the internet of all Asrock motherboards supporting ECC but there is no solid build info.
I think I can either go with the Chinese board and have ECC or give up ECC and make something with the gaming motherboards.
You do not need an overclockable X CPU for a NAS.
You do not need “Pro” versions of Ryzen desktop CPUs to have unofficial ECC support—only for the APUs.
ECC support is only officially certified with AM5 EPYC4000 CPUs, though. With AM4 boards, it will be unoffcial, depending on the board. You best bet would be an AM4 server motherboard, but the days of cheap Gigabyte MC12-LE0 (in Europe) are over, and AsRock Rack AM4 boards are expensive.
