So, I have been looking hard at my preconceptions of what hardware is needed in a media server. Especially one using ZFS.
Would an Epyc 4004 series CPU handle ZFS and something like Plex or Jellyfin perfectly well if combined with say an Intel ARC or Nvidia/AMD card for the rendering? Figure throw in one of those SAS3 HBA controller cards for the array while keeping devices like OS mirror and ZIL/ZLOG/META etc on the onboard nvme/SATA controllers.
I am also wondering if it would be possible/feasible to retrofit my existing SuperMicro 6028U X10DRU-I+ 2U server to use the Epyc 4004 (new board etc). I would ideally like to not have to chuck this power hungry and noisy monster if I can swap in a different board (ATX/EATX/mATX) and maybe replace the fans. It would certainly solve my chassis question since it has 12x 3.5" hotswap bays. I have 8x Intel DC S4610 SATA SSDs I can pull from one of my other servers I will be decommissioning (Dell R710) that would fit the bill for ZIL/META caches. Figure a mirror for the ZIL and a mirror for the META taking up the top row of drive bays. The OS can live on a mirror of nvme on the board or using onboard SATA ports and just be velcroed inside the chassis.
Throw in at least 64GB ECC UDIMM for the 32TB array to feed.
Certainly yes to all.
But if you’re paranoid enough to mirror the SLOG and the boot drive, you’d want at least a 3-way mirror for special vdev, which is pool-critical.
If you are talking about a home media server to run a single TV, and you don’t want to do a lot of transcoding, then you don’t need much oomph at all.
My TrueNAS server only has a 2-core Celeron and 10GB of memory and it is a great media server, achieving over 99.5% ARC hits, and able to fully serve a 1Gb network speed.
Of course, if you are building a media server for video editing or to serve a TV in each of your 10 bedrooms, the requirements will be very different.
You have the chassis, so you’re in the best position to check what can be removed, whether there are standoffs in suitable positions—and no protrusions in unwanted places!—, whether you could 3D-print some support and/or do the metal work to convert the chassis to ATX.
Technically, it will most likely fit a now, non.Supermirco board, if you can remove the current backpanel in the middle. (I have an old, 814.or what chassis. ON that a screew was holding the originbackpanle in place, if I removed it, I could put there the one for the MoBo, except that this case is 1U, so I had to chop off some material from the top of the back panel. But this is obviously not the case for a 2U case).
Anyways, if you do the exchange, you will have problems wit adding any expansion cards, since the place, where they should go, are not vertical, as you will need, but horizontal.
Most likely, your current PCIe riser WILL NOT be compatible with the ne MoBo, you plan to use, and pluggung it in, might actually damage your new MoBo, so be very careful with that!
One work around is to use those frlexible riser cards, but for PCIe Gen 4 and 5 they are really pricy ones and they will make a mess in your case for sure. (you must buy different lengths of them to keep slack minimal)
Also a possible problem will be with the built-in PSU. It might not be ATX compatible on the connector side.
Then you will have the problem with the front panel connection incompatibility, where SM uses a 14 or 16 pin plug for their MoBos but you need the consumer one, if you use a non-server grade MoBo.
And there is no remote management available on consumer boards.
(However, I am not a well informed guy about the EPYC MoBo, so it might be a server grade board.)
I recommend to look for another case instead. There are a number of normal ATX-xx compatible cases around and they are not so expensive. (Like Chengro os Fantec.( I use a FANTEC SRC-2080X07 with total satisfaction for 4 years now.)
And finally, please dont forget, that TrueNAS Disables ALL temperature and fan contorl (meybe, if you have IPMI, you can do some control with that.) on your HW and will set ALL your fans ALWAYS to a 100%, so it WILL be loud. ( I hope, you prove me wrong in this point, because it was such a great annoyance for me with TrueNAS.)
Well, I only recommend keeping it AND changing the MoBo, if he has some advanced DIY skills and the necessary tools.
If the Case has the MoBo in it, he can buy used Xeon CPUs and DDR4 RAM for pennies from ALiexpress or eBay.
You just dont have to buy the top-of-the-line E5-2699 v4 CPU, but one like the E5-2680 v4. That is literally like less than 20 USD per piece. He buys 2 of them, with sufficient amount of RAM, and tries to run the system. If it is not sufficent power, which I highly doubt, since my main TrueNAS box is running on that one, and CPU load seldom goes above like 30%.
Of course, 5+ Plex streams with all transcoding will definitely choke ANY CPU. My Plex server is the off-site backup one in my signature. It has a Xeon v2 CPU, and it is happy to play 5+ Plex streams, even through the network to anothe country, as long as you are fine with the original resolution. As soon, as you need to transcode, even the first stream starts to saturate the CPU, since it does not have a GPU inside.
And even then, he has the case, all other possible hassle are still there. (PSU incompatibility, Front panel buttons/LEDs incompatibility, etc)
I had to Dremel my case for like 2 hours to be able to fit in my norlam ETX PSU. (WHich is also not too common to find, therefore quite expensive. But, this will not be a problem for his build, at least not as it was for me.)
