Low-cost 2-drive NAS box?

TrueNAS General
21

You could, but:

  • A USB flash drive is a very poor choice for a TrueNAS boot device. A USB-connected SSD is less bad.
  • It’s highly unlikely that you’ll have any real use for L2ARC or SLOG.
  • There’s simply no reason for either L2ARC or SLOG to be redundant.
  • That system doesn’t support enough RAM for you to effectively use L2ARC in any event.
1 Like
22

If you really want, you could run the HDDs in a mirror VDEV as well as a metadata special VDEV with 2 NVMe in a mirror.

But really, don’t use USB flash for SCALE’s boot drive.

23

All ZFS pools have a ZIL, ZFS Intent Log, used for synchronous writes. However, an external one is know as a SLOG / LOG, Separate intent LOG. As Dan said, most SOHO users don’t need a SLOG. Let alone Mirrored SLOGs that Enterprise users may want.

L2ARC devices can be striped but not Mirrored. And again as Dan said, you don’t really have enough memory for using a L2ARC. Each entry in the L2ARC requires RAM for pointers / directory, so reduced RAM with a L2ARC, just reduces RAM further.

Don’t use a USB thumb / flash drive. However, either a SATA SSD or NVMe in an USB enclosure can work. It is just that many USB thumb / flash drives are of exceptionally poor quality that one might last just months. That said, their are some USB drives that are of higher quality and cost is noticeably higher as a result.

24

I ordered one on AliExpress. It came with a 16-GB RAM module and 512 GB NVMe drive. I upgraded it with a 32-GB DRAM module and ordered two 16-TB drives from Go Hard Drive.

AOOSTAR R1 (16 GB/512 GB)—$254.37
32GB DDR4 3200MHz PC4-25600—$52.99
2 × Seagate Exos (factory re-certified)—$349.90

16 TB of redundant storage for $657.26.

My impression so far is that installation of TrueNAS worked like a cinch. The hard drive caddies are not the best, but they work. I still have to burn in the drives.

I think, this will work as a backup solution for my residential clients, although I’ll source the NAS through Amazon, instead.