I recently got an old system for free and I have been running TrueNas Scale on it for a while but I have only been using a mirror of 2 2tb drives. This has worked fine so far and I was wondering if I should commit to this hardware with larger and more drives. Specifically I wanted to have a raidz2 array consisting of 6 drives each with at least 18tb capacity.
This NAS will be mainly used as a media library to host my plex collection. I would also have it setup with sonarr,radarr,sabnzbd to manage that library. At the moment I am also using this as a backup location for my synology personal files and would probably keep it that way going forward.
Since I only have 16GB of ram in this machine I am a bit worried that it might not be enough to handle all of that in the long run, especially since I want to add quite a bit of storage capacity to this system.
My mainboard also only has 6 sata ports so I would connect the hard drives to those and then have a standard 2.5 SSD connected to a usb port with an adapter cable to run the OS of of. I would probably have another SSD (or two) connected the same way to create a pool for my apps so that I don’t have to install them on my main storage pool where they would probably keep the drives spinning all the time which I am trying to avoid to save on power.
I know I could add an hba but for now I am trying to avoid that since it would add yet again a higher overall power usage and also some cooling concerns.
These are my system specs:
Mainboard: Asus p9d ws
CPU: i3-4160
Ram: 16GB ECC
No GPU
Are there any glaring issues with this setup, anything that I should change?
As someone who does run their NAS off a USB SSD, I would counsel against it as I get regular disconnects and O/S hangs or crashes as a consequence. Depending on which USB port I use the crashes can be between 2 hours and several weeks apart.
Similarly do not use USB SSDs for anything that you need to be available, and definitely not for any sort of striped or redundant pools.
My advice would be to have a 5x RAIDZ2 instead and use the spare port for a SATA SSD.
You will really need an SSD to host your apps and their metadata too - but whilst it is also not supported (unlike boot USD SSB which I cannot support due to my own experiences) I would recommend hiving off part of the boot drive for the boot-pool (say 32GB) and using the rest for an apps-pool.
Without knowing how much memory sonarr/radarr/sabnzbd will take, and how much ARC they will need, it is impossible to know whether 16GB will be enough. The O/S will take c. 4GB and my estimate is that you will need 6-8GB for ARC to achieve 99%+ hit rates, so that would leave you with c. 4GB of memory you can use for apps.
Hm, I was really hoping I could get 6 storage drives total for my storage needs. When you are talking about USB SSD, do you mean those that connect directly via USB as in they are not Sata SSDs? Because my plan was to just use a regular Sata SSD and then use an adapter cable to connect it to a USB Port. Maybe that would make a difference when it comes to connection drop outs?
Unlike SATA connections, USB connections are subject to disconnects, and these do NOT reconnect automatically - instead your NAS hangs or crashes.
USB → SATA bridges (connectors) can vary in quality and functionality - for example the one in my SSK USB SSD stick (not a normal stick - but an SSD) does not handle TRIM commands.
My advice, don’t do it unless you absolutely have to.
Instead buy a PCIe LSI HBA in order to connect more drives via SATA.
Honestly my experience is not so bad about, never had 1 hang/crash in months (only one, when SSD die ), and the scenario you are describing Is not something i would expect in normale condition.
Actually i’m tryng the pci-ex > NVME route… Sure more reliable way than USB (got 3 i think Intel Optane for really cheap price), but too soon to can say something about.
The game changer here probably Is the mainboard itself: the USB port i use for that, Is inside, both my mainboard have one
), and the scenario you are describing Is not something i would expect in normale condition.