I have read a lot of threads and docs, but I am still unsure, what would be the best storage hardware and configuration for my first TrueNAS system - and if it is even possible to achive my goals.
At the moment I am running an older server - the Supermicro motherboard and the Adaptec RAID controller are about 10 years old, the 3ware RAID controller is about 15 years old. I get memory problems from time to time and Linux is complaining about one of the CPU cores. So I thought, it would be necessary, to replace this machine ASAP by something new.
Instead of replacing it 1:1 with a new motherboard and new controllers I would prefer to switch to a NAS system like TrueNAS.
The old server has the the following storage configuration (grown over years, therefore many different disk types):
root - 2 x 240 GB SATA SSD RAID1
database - 2 x 280 GB HDD SAS RAID1
mail - 2 x 450 GB SSD SAS RAID1
vmware - 2 x 450 GB SSD SATA RAID1
archiv - 4 x 4 TB HDD RAID5
backup - 1 x 4 TB HDD Single
backup duplicate - 9 x 1 x 4 TB HDD Single
I intend to use one (or two?) of the existing 240 GB SSD for the system, 2 (maybe 3) new 12 TB HDDs for the archiv pool instead of the old 4 4 TB HDDs. database and mail should share 2 new 2 TB SSDs, vmware will consist of 2 2 TB SSDs, too, for backup I’d use a new single 12 TB HDD and also the backup duplicate disks will be replaced by 12 TB HDDs. So far for the real hardware. Any better ideas at this point would be welcome.
Now for the things, I am really unsure about:
My actual backup strategy is to backup this server, its two companions and a bunch of clients to the server’s local backup disk using rsync mirroring, but I will be running low on disk space shortly (therefore the larger 12 TB disks for this purpose).
After backup has finished, the backup disk is mirrored to one of the backup duplicates also using rsync mirror. Every day I replace the backup duplicate by the one for this day, i.e. I have 7 disks for each day of the week and 2 additional ones for the beginning of even and uneven months. One of the latter is always stored in a different location, so that I have a copy of my data in case of a catastrophe. The backup duplicates are LUKS encrpyted.
Question is: Would I choose the same or a similar strategy, if I would switch to TrueNAS with its ZFS features? Will it be possible to swap the backup duplicate every day or are there any limitations in TrueNAS/ZFS prohibiting this? The backplane of the new machine of course has to support hot swapping. Backup and duplicating should be automated, so that the only thing anyone has to do manually is to swap the duplicate disk.
I have a test system here consisting of a Silverstone CS381 rack, a Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F motherboard with 64 gig of RAM, lots of fans and a few disks like the ones described above. This system is up and running, so I can test everything I like to.
One thing to keep in mind is that it looks like you’re using traditional (hardware?) RAID.
TrueNAS/ZFS uses software RAID. This means you will need to build ZFS pools and copy the data to it, destroy your old RAIDs, and reconfigure them in TrueNAS as ZFS pools. If you’re building a separate, new system, you may be able to start with TrueNAS and a mirror pool with the 12TB drives, copy data from one of the RAIDs in the old system, destroy it, bring the disks to TrueNAS, create the new pool, copy the backed up data to it. Will take some time to migrate everything over.
Another potential concern is the RAID hardare. ZFS should have direct access to the disks. Most people, along with their mothers, use LSI cards flashed to “IT mode.” I do not know much about Adaptec and 3ware controllers to know if that’s an option. I’ve only ever used LSI HBAs and Adaptec expanders.
Also, VMware. It’s probably possible to host ESXi as a VM, but to me it sounds like a bad idea for a production system. You could continue using your old system as a hypervisor and the new one as TrueNAS/storage. TrueNAS supports VMs through Incus, but it’s not a full replacement for something like Proxmox or ESXi. I would expect that VMs need to be rebuilt if you move them to Incus. Some things to consider…
Rotating disks for backups? I’m sure it’s possible, but it’s not a way I’ve handled backups and I have no input.
Yes, this is true for the existing server, but as I wrote:
“Instead of replacing it 1:1 with a new motherboard and new controllers I would prefer to switch to a NAS system like TrueNAS.”
This is the way, I wanted to go: Adding disks, creating vdevs and pools, rsyncing data from the old server to the new NAS.
But the question is: Does the storage partitioning as described in my post make sense or should I better create more or less vdevs.
No, I don’t want to use RAID controllers in the new NAS. This is one of the reasons, I wanted to switch to ZFS.
My VMs are really small Linux and Windows systems.
Would it better to put the Linux systems into containers?
This is my main concern, because this backup handling has worked perfectly for about 20 years now. I am open to proposals how to solve this with TrueNAS/ZFS methods.
