TrueNas experimentation server help

TrueNAS General
1

Hi everyone,

This is my first experiment with TrueNAS and while this is not going to be a live setup it will be an experiment platform for me to learn as I look at moving away from my current Synology 3-2-1 ish setup.

I plan to build this mostly from old hardware I have lying around, but willing to invest a small amount in this experimental setup.

Currently I have:-
Z97 Motherboard
intel 4790k
32Gb Ram (non ECC)
2 x 1Tb Samsung 840 EVO (Sata)
4 x 3TB WD30EFRX (WD Red CMR drive)
1 x 1 Gb on board Nic
1 x Unused NVME slot

The things I will be experimenting with is just some SMB storage for user files and some CCTV cameras, as well as a couple of Docker Containers running apps (though might play with some native apps as well).
There won’t be any transcoding and thus will it won’t have a dedicated GPU, just the iGPU on the 4790k.
I might also be playing with a fibre network install at a later date.
But this is just all to support 1 user (me).

So my thoughts on a setup are:-
Buy a small NVME (128Gb are really cheap and the smallest easily available) for the OS boot drive.
I don’t really want to waste the 2 x 1TB SSD’s on a boot drive.
In a future setup I might go for a mirror’d small boot drive setup.

Use the 2 x 1 TB SSD’s are a mirror’d pool for the App’s/Containers

Use the 4 x 3TB spinning disks for a RAIDZ1 pool for SMB storage

I will probably setup up some backup of TrueNas configs to one of the other pools and probably my secure storage location.

Thoughts on the config?

Thanks
Andrew

2

This looks like a reasonable configuration for a first experiment—hoping that the motherboard has an Intel NIC.

3

Intel I218-V Nic

4

That describes the first gaming PC I ever built. :smiley: (Minus a dedicated graphics card)

You could use a SATA boot drive, 128GB Patriots are still available on Amazon for about $15 I think, and won’t use a NVME slot.

Also, boot device redundancy is more trouble than it’s worth: TrueNAS lets you export the configuration so you can re-upload it to a fresh install on a single drive.

5

It was until recently my main PC (for some light gaming) with an Nvidia GeForce GTX980 with 4Gb on it.
It only has 6 SATA connection on it, so need to use the NVME slot to get the OS Drive and was looking at 128Gb Patriot Gen 3 for about that price for OS drive.

6

Gotcha.

You could get a SATA or SAS controller card for extra ports if you wish to expand later.

7

As this is something I’m experimenting with it won’t be expanded later, only might add a 10Gb/SFP fibre connection to it using a PCIE card to experiment with fibre