Selecting the right hardware for Immich based media server

TrueNAS General
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Hi All,

I’ve been searching around for a while to validate my setup for Immich. It’s partially based on hardware I have from an older build and hardware I’ve purchased to (hopefully) do a good job.

My primary worry is around ZFS wear on my SSDs. My goal is to use them for my Immich applications/containers, postgres data and thumbnails. My images and videos (uploads) will be on my Raid-Z (HDDs) at rest.

Specs:

  • Intel Xeon E-2134 CPU
  • Supermicro X11SCL-iF
  • 32GB ECC memory
  • Nvidia T400 4GB GPU
  • M.2 to 5x sata adapter
  • 2x Intel D3 S4510 SSDs (240GB) (98% health)
  • 2x Samsung Evo 860 250GB SSDs
  • 3x 4tb Seagate Ironwolf drives

My aim is to have the Evos as the boot pool. The intel drives for docker app data as above and the Nvidia GPU for the immich cuda machine learning service. Ironwolfs for the upload data set.

My worry is around the ZFS wear on SSDs. I’ve read a few challenging stories over the years and seen a lot of tuning guides by many to reduce the amplification. Based on experience of many here and these specific enterprise drives, how have people found ZFS in the last two years or so? Or am I overthinking this one when it comes to ZFS?

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youre overthinking the zfs wear part a bit for this layout. the Intel D3 S4510s are enterprise drives and they handle app/postgres/thumbnail churn on zfs fine for most people. put Immich app data + postgres + thumbs there, keep the actual photo/video library on the Ironwolf raidz. that split is the right call.

Evos as boot pool is also fine. boot sees way less write traffic than databases.

leave sync at standard on the app dataset unless you have a real slog. dont put the upload library on the ssds. 32gb ram is workable but Immich + postgres + zfs arc will fight, so watch ARC and give Immich a hard mem limit if the box starts swapping. T400 4gb is enough for Immich ML at normal home library sizes.

the scary wear threads are usually consumer ssds doing sync-heavy databases with no budget left. S4510s at 98% health are not that story.

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Thank you very much for replying, I really appreciate it. I’ll give this a go and keep a spare SSD in the house just to be safe