Hello all, I’ve been running TrueNAS underneath a Proxmox homelab for awhile and it works but I want to transition to a dedicated TrueNAS box that can be left on at all times without using as much power as my main homelab. Ran across the Minisforum N5 Pro which does look interesting, but according to NAScompares the PCIe lanes for the NVMe are 2 at 4.0x1 and 1 and 4.0x2 which seems like it would bottleneck any SSD you put in. The AI 9 HX 370 CPU looks interesting for local LLMs, but unsure how well it would run under TrueNAS. Would you even be able to use the NPU? Saw conflicting info with a quick search for people trying to use the NPU on a Linux laptop.
Then I saw the Aoostar WTR Max with 6 HDD bays and 5 NVMe. Also limits the PCIe lanes for NVMe to 3 at 4.0x2 and 2 at 4.0x1. Much better in my opinion than the Minisforum. My question though is: does this still limit the bandwidth on NVMe too much to use as a log or cache VDEV? Would I even need a cache VDEV on a 6 bay NAS with sufficient RAM? Seems like a good deal for $700 considering most appliance NAS like Ugreen go for $1000 for less options.
What are your thoughts on either of these machines? Would you look into either of these for a homelab setup?
I don’t really think I need L2ARC caching for my needs to be honest, now that I think about it more I doubt I could saturate the regular ARC cache enough for it to be useful. You are right about that.
The reason I was thinking about SLOG is that I use NFS shares and was under the impression that for NFS shares you wanted to use SLOG to allow for synchronous writes across the NFS share. Maybe this is not necessary for a small 6 HDD NAS though?
Do you have a suggestion for what to look for in a NAS device or manufacturers to look for that make NAS appliances?
SLOG may be useful for any number of HDDs… if you need sync writes.
If you’re using NFS to share data files like you would do with SMB, you may override NFS defaults and disable sync writes.
That depends on what you want to do with it.
There are regular discussions on home builds, less so for ready-made appliances (or then it’s about installing TrueNAS, not hardware).
The Aoostar WTR Max you’ve found is intriguing. Plus: ECC support and X710 SFP+. Minus: DDR5 SO-DIMM, no block diagram… and I’m tempted to throw the PRO 8845HS CPU in this column as well because it looks like massive overkill in a little NAS—and then I wonder which corners have been cut to reach the price point with that.
That is a good point about what corners are being cut to reach that price point… Also had not considered disabling sync writes on NFS.
Basically what I’m looking for is a NAS powerful enough to work as a NAS obviously, run a media server and arr stack, and run various docker containers for things like PiHole and the like. Only thing is I want it to support true ECC RAM as I’m paranoid by nature. This seems to be the problem I keep running into and therefore why I mentioned the two prebuilt solutions that I did. Seem to be the only ones I could find with ECC support. Also don’t want to spend more than $1000. Wondering if I should just watch ebay for used server boards or something instead.
None of what you describe appears to require the computing power of a 8845HS. But if you get a WTR MAX your report on it will be of interest.
(Incidentally, x2 or x1 links to NVMe should not be an issue for light loads.)
Well it’s good to know this would theoretically work for my needs even if the CPU is overkill. I will have to wait and see how availability plays out especially because I am in the US.
If I manage to get either the Aoostar WTR Max or Minisforum N5 Pro (they just announced an approximate release date of June) without paying an arm and a leg in customs I will report back on my experience.
