iam new to the whole TrueNas topic so please be gentle.
with the todays hardware prices (especially for HDDs) iam running out of space on my Synology, therefore instead of replacing disks for bigger id rather like to scale sideways as my disks are small but perfectly fine. (and smaller tend to be cheaper used also)
iam looking to achieve a homeserver which can do the following:
proxmox as hypervisor
TrueNas vm + about 4 other small ones
i tried to use various AIs in order to find possible hardware but i got stuck.
my initial thought was going with SUPERMICRO X10SRH-CF Server Mainboard and a Xeon CPU as it comes with 10 SATA + 8 on the onboard HBA till i found reports that i cannot properly pass the 10 SATA through. (at least not as full controller but single hdd which seems to be not recommended) also this board requires Server RAM and a PCI → SSD thingy for boot os. (and technically a GPU if transcoding in the future become relevant)
so i guess i better scrap that idea…
therefore id like to go with a consumer AM4 board with an Ryzen Pro with integrated CPU so i can use UDIMM RAM
i want to make sure that for future expansion i can put in either 2x 8port HBA or a 16 port HBA so there is no need for sudden panic if space gets tight again or HDDs double in price again.
it pretty well documented that AM4 plus Ryzen Pro “G” CPU will allow ECC UDIMM but i cant find a concrete recommendation which also shows that i can passthrough HBA successfully from proxmox to truenas
i found that people use a board like that
ASRock X570M Pro4,
id Love to go with the Asrock Rack X570D4U-2L2T as it seems to be better but they are either sold out or crazy expensive
can someone of you professionals may give me a hand and help me with a board choice which fulfills my need?
I dont recommend virtualized Truenas installations as a primary system. Even if done “right” you add unneeded complexity to your systen. I dont know how well versed you are with Proxmox. But if you are not, on top of not knowing Truenas aswell, you have to deal with 2 new softwares.
Consumer boards often dont seperate the IOMMU groups discreet enough for passthrough of devices ( such as HBAs and GPUs).
The mainboards in my signature are all good choices. Depending on how much compute power and/or future expansion possibilities you want. They all seperate the IOMMU groups fine enough for discreet passthrough of all PCIe devices.
Also ECC UDIMM tends to be even more expensive than ECC RDIMM.
Running VMs on Truenas itself is possible. Not as well as on Proxmox ( less options, but it uses the same KVM/QEMU base), but coming from Synology you probably will be fine. I ran/run several. Including 2 gaming WIN11 VMs for a while with GPUs, an ubuntu VM and a PBS VM.
i made the stupid misstake to order some stuff bc i listed to 2 seperate AIs asking them several times if they are sure.
so basically i own that supermicro board: SUPERMICRO X10SRH-CF and an Intel Xeon E5-2630 v4 incl. Cooler (bc it has 10 SATA + 8 onboard HBA (which is plenty for future expansion) iam currectly planning to use 7hdd, 2ssd sata, and something small for OS)
i have most likely the chance to get the RAM pretty cheap (i know a guy…)
currently iam using a “mini” PC to play around a bit (i5-8500 6core) which i wanted to sell once i have “everything on 1 system properly”
so right now iam thinking to return the X10 mobo and go “fresh” (the Xeon was only 12 bucks)
however findings and your post got me thinking. what if i just use the stuff i have, so using truenas directly on the SUPERMICRO which safes me all headdache with extra HBAs
and then use the mini PC with proxmox for the VMs i need. that also would solve my non existing GPU problem with the Xeon for the in the future maybe needed transcoding (which i have no need right now but never say never
sounds like some kind of plan but i cant sell the mini PC and i have another thing drawing power. also iam not sure how power hungry that Serverboard is.
Depending on the requirements of your “four small VMs” you can run them directly on TrueNAS without the need for Proxmox. While TN is not quite as capable as Proxmox in terms of virtualisation, it’s more than adequate. E.g. I run:
Windows 11
Ubuntu & Elastiflow
HAOS
without problems.
With the exception of Windows 11, but Windows 10 in the mix, I have been running this combo on TrueNAS CORE, even, for years.
Good luck and have fun. Come back with any questions that might arise.
the reason i went to for that bord and CPU (beside the fact that i got fooled by AIs) was the thought i can do all i need with it:
my 9 current disks
enough power to run the following vms:
1x windows 10/11
1x Homeassist
1x vault/bitwarden
1x adguard
room for spare vm stuff like linux to play around whatever
i am aware that this is not the most energy saving combo but i figured if i run TN seperate and another PC iam most likely not much off either. and with spinning disks on spindown it should not be that bad, at least that was my idea…
bonus, i could sell the mini PC
stupid question i havent even thought about, if i run stuff like windows in VM, do i need a seperate gpu for that?
honestly i thought this whole thing would be very easy as lots of people run TN and homelabs and stuff and you can run this fairly on low watt, guess i made some misstakes here, if i take the mentioned estimated 100+ watt in idle compared to 10w in idle on my old NAS + 30 of the minipc it gets to a region where buying new biggers disks dont look that bad
I was only arguing the point that you might not need Proxmox in your setup. The rest stays the same. Install TrueNAS on the machine and deploy the “four small VMs” on TrueNAS.
The question of GPU or not is as frequently: it depends. What is the intended use case for that Windows VM? Gaming? Yes, in that case probably you will need a GPU and connect a monitor to it or some such. I am not into PC gaming and I really don’t know. And the GPU requirement is also completely independent of “Proxmox or TrueNAS as the hypervisor”.
I connect to my Windows VM via RDP to run software not available for my Mac. But nothing requiring good graphics performance. Just general desktop applications.
You did not offend me. Just pointing out e.g. your GPU question is entirely out of the scope of my first argument in this thread, which is simply:
Your hardware is fine. You won’t need Proxmox. Install TrueNAS and use it to run your VMs. That’s all I wanted to add, really. And welcome to the forum and the community
Addendum: specifically with HAOS or general Linux experiments I can confirm they will run perfectly fine. Windows 11 runs with better performance on TrueNAS than on Proxmox for me. But then my system has a Xeon-D, so quite old. And you don’t need a GPU to run e.g. Windows and Office or similar. Use RDP to connect.
thank you i guess i will give it a try and see how much down i can get the consumption with spindown and disabling as much on the board as possible due to not needed (like the LSI)
Be carefull here. Either you will have to do 2 Pools, or 1 pool with 2 vdevs. Putting them all in a 7-wide RAIDZx vdev will limit the capacity to what you would get with 7x 1 TB.
PS: server boards are not optimized for low idle power. Esspecially Haswell generation compared to 2026. If you want lowish idle power look at Xeon D and Xeon E.
With hdd spindown, it would be almost HALF the power (you do care about Earth right?).
So much talk about saving energy by all companies, but it’s all pretend, as enabling true power savings is not really a priority as we can see.
The spindown scripts do work, but what a shame that IX-Systems couldn’t simply offer an alternative for truly power conscious people.
Now to address the question:
You can always use that mini PC for TN and run Windows, HAOS and use the big server for all your backups.
I do run TN in several mini pcs, one even with an external nvme + 3 hdd enclosure (USB 3.2, 10Gbit) that I’m using for both W11 (nvme) and storage (hdd) and have been happy with the results and performance.
I schedule my backup servers to either power off or go to sleep when backups are not taken (12 midnight to 8am, or 5pm, depending if primary or secondary backup server).
So yes, be careful of AI, if you do not qualify or give proper requirements to your query.
But be careful with what people tell you too, as some can never think of test outside the box.
Check UNRAID. Not free, but affordable and very well done and capable.
I pick low power hardware for that reason. The drives I have use 3 Watts each when spinning idle. So yes, I could save 12 Watts. At the risk of wearing down my drives early. Helium filled ones go even lower on idle power.
And my NAS is not just a NAS to which I occasionally make a backup or watch a movie in the evening. It runs publicly accessibly services like e.g. my Nextcloud to which the whole family’s end devices are connected via Nextcloud client.
I guess eventually something like a Beelink ME Mini but with more memory and ECC will be what most people run, no spinning storage at all and a low power design.
I second that. If power consumption is a concern, an 11 year old Haswell era server board and CPU with onboard SAS + 7 small HDDs is not an optimized system.
A xeon D/E with a 3-way mirror of 8-12TB HDDs would probably half the idle power needs.
I have been running truenas as a VM in proxmox for quite sometime. My drives are attached via an HBA but I could not do hardware passthrough (the GPU uses the main slot that can be independently passed through). I have to do it via identifiers and software but I still run all drives through the HBA and only drives provided to truenas are connected to the HBA. The main issue with that is smart tests are a bit wonky as they have to be done by proxmox, but its generally not been an issue. All this is because I have a silly gaming motherboard that was repurposed.
The GPU is only used for transcoding so next upgrade would probably be to switch to an intel based system with and igpu and move transcoding functions into an LXC. Then repurpose this system into a backup with the drives directly attached to the motherboard and truenas on bare metal. I really just want a system that lets be pass through my drives to truenas at a hardware level and has an integrated GPU i can use for transcoding (a personal AI installation is not yet in the works). This would lower my power consumption. If i could delete the HBA that would help lower power consumption as well.
You mentioned 4 VMs. home assistant can run in a container (i run mine that way) and your other apps as well can probably be run in a container. I suggest you create a single VM that you put all your containers in. If you are doing truenas baremetal you can use the built in container system to install any apps that leverage transcoding (e.g., plex/jellyfin). You may also be able to use it for other containers. I couldn’t stand the way truenas handles VMs and containers so I switch to proxmox but its a case of pick your poison.
BTW - if you are concerned about power consumption and have a backup that you replicate to you can configure it to auto wakeup pull the latest snapshots, generate and email reports, and then shutdown. I have mine configured that way and its been solid for a few months now even on the ancient core 2 duo that it is.
