I am in need of advice from the collective, Is there anything you would recommend I switch out, change or would you do something different to how I am planning on doing it?
(Open to any advise etc, Many thanks in advance )
So, my current TrueNAS Build is a Dell 720XD with 12 * 6TB SAS Drives, 2 E5-2650 V2 CPUâs and 96GB DDR3 Ram (full specs are at bottom of posting)
This has served me well for what I needed but now itâs becoming a hindrance (Noise, Power, etc) currently idles around 200W
I have come up with this new build PC Part picker link
OS: Latest version of TrueNAS (Currently running TrueNAS-24.04.2 Dragon Fish)
CPU: Intel core i3-14100F (Toying with swapping to i5-14100F)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i
Motherboard: MSI Pro B760M-A Wi-Fi (Will be using ethernet, need the Wi-Fi model for 16X PCie lane)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 (4*8GB sticks, total 32GB) â Alreadyhave
PSU: Corsair RM750 750W â Already have
Case: Silverstone CS382 ATX Mid Tower Case
Storage:
Boot: 2 * Samsung 870 evo 250GB In mirror â Already have
Pool 1: 3 * 4TB Seagate Iron wolf in Raid Z1 â Already have
Pool 2: 3 * 18TB Seagate Exos in Raid Z1
Will be using an M.2 to Sata expansion card to hook up some drives (See diagram for TrueNAS), Plugged into the M.2 slot connected to the CPU
Pool 1, will have 2 SMB Shares and 1 NFS Share hanging off it which will be used simply for backing up my machine, Proxmox and a few other bits of gear
Pool 2, will have 1 SMB Shares hanging off it for my Plex Media Library (Hosted in Proxmox)
My goals are
To lower my overall power consumption
Use TrueNAS as a NAS (Currently has many VMâs and Apps installed on the dell which are being moved to Proxmox)
Have room to grow each pool later down the line if I need too (This is not something I can do atm with the Dell 720XD being at full capacity)
Lower the noise of the NAS in an idle state, (I have no vision of this being dead silent under load and will be going in a cupboard with decent air flow / cooling)
Upgrade paths I may take in the future in order:
Replace RAM (64Gb or 96GB) â Not done at very moment due to budget constraints, but def will be done, since ZFS loves RAM
Adding MB038SP-B 8 Bay 2.5" SATA SSD Rack from Icy dock and populating it with 2 or 3 TB SSDâs if I decide to use this NAS to host projects off of
(Such as video editing, 3D Imaging, Game servers, currently done from my main gaming machine
Anything computational will be on Proxmox, TrueNAS would simply mange data and provide SMB or NFS Shares to proxmox or relevant machines etc)
Adding Noctua fans to improve noise level (Not TrueNAS related)
Current Dell R720XD specs in detail
1 x Dell PowerEdge R720XD CTO Rack Server
2 x Intel Xeon Processor E5-2650 v2
2 x Dell PowerEdge R720/720XD Heatsink
6 x Dell PowerEdge R720 / R720XD Hot Swap Fan
6 x Samsung 16GB (1x16GB) PC3-14900R 2Rx4 Server
Memory
12 x DELL 6TB 7.2K 12G 3.5INCH SAS HDD
1 x Dell Broadcom 5720 Quad Port Ethernet 1GbE PCI-e 2.0 Network Daughter Card
2 x Dell 750W HS 80+ Power Supply Unit
TrueNAS OS: TrueNAS-24.04.2 Dragon Fish
Boot Drive: Samsung 870 evo 250GB, Connected via SATA to USB adapter externally (Best I could do)
Side Note
I am on the hunt for any of the following CPUâs, If I can find them anywhere in AUS I will be swapping out the CPU I have selected already
I would not use and M.2 to SATA adapter, as well as gaming hardware: ECC RAM and IPMI are a must for me, alongside Better PCIe lanes distribution.
There is also little point in anything beyond an i3 for simple NAS purposes, and with 32GB of RAM you will be fine (especially if you have Gbit network).
If you want to maintain your current parity level I suggest going with 2 bigger drives in mirror.
My suggestion is to go for a motherboard that has the SATA ports you require⌠generally, once you understand your requirements itâs apparent that server grade motherboards are better suited for these kind of build).
Thank you for the advice
I have networking up to 10GB so was planning to start with 2.5GB as this is what the main portion of my network is on and upping to 10GB at a later date if needed
Do you have any recommended motherboards? or locations to look out for server motherboards?
Was trying to keep to new hardware for lower TDP, etc
As above except I would advise about thinking of RAIDZ2 for Pool 2.
RAIDZ1 for 3x 18TB drives is probably just about OK, but if you ever want to add space to this through RAIDZ expansion, you will need to be on RAIDZ2 - so my advice would either be to create a 3x RAIDZ2 now using the CLI and expand later as you need to, or buy a 4th 18TB drive to create a 4x RAIDZ2 via the UI.
I would generally reccommend against RAIDZ1: either go mirrors or RAIDZ2/3. Either way with the savings from MB+CPU you should have the budget for larger and/or more drives.
Also, take a look at the Toshiba MG HDD line, they are great drives and usually quite cheaper than WD or Seagate. Oh, donât buy used drives! And avoid SMR ones as they are not compatible with ZFS.
Choosing the pool layout is the system planning part I prefer the most!
Anecdote: I made my HDD pool 5x 4TB RAIDZ1, but I soon wished I had made it RAIDZ2 but too late. So far (18 months) I have had zero disk problems, but eventually we will have to see whether it turns out to be an OK decision or a poor one.
For reference I am located in South Australia
I will have a look into the hardware @Davvo recommended
I will reconsider my build
I really donât have the budget to spend too much on drives so I will probably drop back to a mirrored pool of 20TB drives this would be more then enough for at least a few years,
This pool is used for Plex which is currently at 9TB after about 2 years
Where would be a good guide for server hardware or do you have any advice for buying hardware seconded hand?
Server hardware is very out of my depth when it comes to hardware wouldnât even know where to start and eBay and what not really does scare me buying from them
The case I have selected above also only supports up to Micro ATX motherboards and I would like to stick with this case for the build
I highly advise against that M.2 to sATA adapter.
They are too expensive and seldom work correctly!
An IBM 1015 you can buy for less than 50 EUR used.
You have to reflash it to IT mode, and buy twl SFF ta sATA cables, and you already have 8 sATA ports, on top of the ones on your motherboard ones.
The boot drives: I dont think, you need to use a mirrored boot pool. TrueNAS is really good at this point of view. You can save the configuration to an external file (Of course, somewhere safe, so it is not lost if a drive dies), you just reinstall the same version and import your settings.
I bought used 16GB Intel Optane, M.2 drives to my servers from Aliexpress for like less 5 EUR each. They will be totally sufficient for this task. Especially, if you plan to install TrueNAS over Proxmox. Proxmox will fit even on this small drive and also it writes really almost no data to the drive. I recommend to use those 2 SSD-s for your VM-s and containers. YOu can even use them striped, for best speed if you set up like hourly snapshoting and daily backups to your HDD pool.
HDDs: Az others recommended, not to buy SMR disks for ZFS. They are not compatible, and will make your scrubbing and resilvering tasks last forever. You might check out recertified enterprise drives. They are practically new drives, with 2-3 years of warranty for a nice discount.
Regarding the pools: I prefer RiadZ2, possibly with a hot spare present. I would say, you are better off to buy 6x18TB sATA drives and make them a RaidZ2 pool.That will offer you like 70+TB raw space. I am sure, you will not need that much. You just have to create separate datasets for your different kind of data (Backups/Media files)
For Plex, you can use the container app, so you dont need any additiona VM just for that (Actually, Proxmox can also run conmtiners, so it would be even better to use it that way. My remote backup server is in a nother country, aand it runs a TrueNAS VM, an Ubuntu 22.04LTS linux VM, where Plex runs. Plex uses my backup drive for media storage, and it is working great. WIthout transcoding it is able to serv even 7 parallel streams, to practically anywhere in the world (However setting it fully up was, lets say challengingâŚ)
If you want transcoding under plex, I recommend getting a suitable VGA for HW acceleration. (Or use the receiver device to do the transcoding.) An Intel ARC 310 you can buy around like a 100EUR new and they have nice performance and even they support AV1 already.
Motherboard: According to my experience, simpler is better! So I would recommend to go after lower HDD count and not using a HBA if possible. (LIke I told above: 6xbig HDD, plus using the Motherboards M.2 slots.) I usually buy LGA 2011 socket Xeon CPUs and motherboards from Aliexpress The boards are usually "âNEWâ that means the chipsets are recycled from old boards, but the board itself is brand new. Xeon V3-v4 CPUs you can buy a decent performance for lesst then 50 EUR (My last purchase is a Xeon E5-2697 v4 CPU, for like 45 EUR that is the second fastert member of the family. 18 cores, 36 threads, 145W TDP.)
CPU: Intel 12th gen is OK, it is not affected by this thermal runaway issue. 13th and 14th gen, I would only buy new. second hand CPUs are a high risk.I would say, forget about the T variants. They are way too rare and expensive to buy. I would say, for basic tasks, like Proxmox, TrueNAS and one VM, even the cheapest i3 is sufficient. Put the difference into buying M.2 NVMe SSDs and/or bigger capacity HDDs.
RAM: 32 GB seems a bit too low for my taste, if you want to use multiple VMs. Also lack of ECC is also concerning to me.
Fans: I recommend Noctua. Since I first bought one, I cannot imagine, why did not I buy it before⌠If you want silence, always buy the biggest possible fan size for the task (Like 120mm fan on the CPU cooler, and possibly 140mm fans for air intake and exhaust. Be aware, that TrueNAS will let your fan speeds to 100%, so it will be noisy.
Case: Your choice seems reasonable. I would say, nice cut outs for airflow are welcome, and it is preferable, that it can fit a CPU cooler with 120mm fan, AND 140mm intake and exhaust fans.
Finally, you might want to keep your current server for local backups, and start it like once a da, or a week, run the backup and turn it off.
)