a xPenology user looking at redeploying onto TrueNAS Scale

[georgelza]

hi hi all,
so as per the subject, I've had a xPenology for the last 3-4 years, been pretty happy with it, except for.
1. me and the forum does not get along, abrasive would be nice way to refer to them, simplest question you're treated like a id10t.
2. Recently, my NAS was at random shutting down, no errors reported anywhere other than the log message of a unusual power down.
Initially it only required my to restart the machine, irritating but no issues otherwise, once while opening the machine to check the cabling I "bumped" a Sata cable to a HDD, resulting in one of my VG's going into a degraded state when it was started, well 16hours later after a rebuild, all good, problem this become a regular issue. Realising / thinking I might have a problem HDD, and I had a exact never used straight out of factory drive spare in the case, decided to remove the problem drive and replace with new drive, thinking DSM would see this and rebuild the VG, well... first as I selected the VG/manage/repair, it started building for about 20 seconds and then the HDD went from initialising to crash., eventually I removed the drive, zero'd it, retried, and this is wheels came off, the same drive failed again and this time I had a 2nd drive failing, causing the VG now to crash, a reboot of the server, brought volume back in degraded state. At this point all alarm bells went off,
VG = 14.6 TB, build on 5 x 4TB Ironwolf drives, I have a 2nd VG build on a 128GB M.2 card that acts as a cache for Plex and also my docker repository volume. (and this is also where some of my question to this community comes in ... Docker ?)

My MB can handle 6 IO devices, the M.2 takes up one of my slots, so I can currently only use 5 x HDD's. although I have 6 and I actually believe that problem drive from above is not a problem.
I run Plex
I run my Unify controller as a docker image - does not have to be ... I've done a backup of the configuration, so hoping when rebuild onto another host importing the backup configuration will return my unify to what it is now.

At this point I'm not happy with DSM, as much as I love it, so looking at TrueNAS SCALE, as it has docker support which is attractive for me as I can use that as a mini lab for work also.
the NAS is configured with 16GB RAM, and has a i5 processor.
I have a 6 port, 4 channel SATA (Vantec) on it's way, thinking is to rather split the 5 x HDD VG into 2 separate RAID/VG's to reduce the blast radius when something goes wrong, place photos and documents on a 2 drive mirror config, and the balance of the drives into a large VG for media, movies, music etc.

Some advise/help would be appreciate, with the entire back story in mind.

and oh I'm looking at TrueNAS SCALE due to the docker component, which CORE does not have.

G

 

[georgelza]

Edit... while I'm thinking about this I'm going to build a TrueNAS SCALE VM on my MAC, and do some looking around.

Sadly has to be on VMWare Fusion as VirtualBox seems to be permanently broken now on Big SUR at this time still.

G

 

[sretalla]

1. me and the forum does not get along, abrasive would be nice way to refer to them, simplest question you're treated like a id10t.

This forum doesn't have a flawless history in that regard either, but if you ask reasonable questions and do the recommended reading, you'll get reasonable answers.

VG = 14.6 TB, build on 5 x 4TB Ironwolf drives, I have a 2nd VG build on a 128GB M.2 card that acts as a cache for Plex and also my docker repository volume. (and this is also where some of my question to this community comes in ... Docker ?)

You'll need to do some investigation into ZFS to understand if it's the right product for you... it's an important set of differences from other types of RAID and takes a lot of understanding before you can design a proper pool layout to fit your needs (and doesn't allow flexibility in the same way as other RAID... e.g. you can't add additional drives to a RAIDZ VDEV... at least not for another couple of years... and maybe if you understand what you're doing, you wouldn't want to do that anyway).

Something like a quick google of Understanding ZFS might give you some options in terms of video or text to help with the basics you should know before diving in.

The resources section has things like this: https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/introduction-to-zfs.111/

Google will link to this one, which I found interesting and rather comprehensive: https://arstechnica.com/information...01-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/

and oh I'm looking at TrueNAS SCALE due to the docker component, which CORE does not have.

If you want built-in docker in the GUI of the NAS, then you'll certainly want SCALE. You can have container VMs on CORE and run it yourself with something like Rancher if you don't need a single pane of glass to manage the NAS and Docker environment.

NOTE: TrueNAS SCALE is in ALPHA... it is not yet feature complete and is based on the debian bullseye kernel, which isn't in stable yet either.

 

[sretalla]

Also, Welcome and good luck on your journey, wherever it takes you.

 

[georgelza]

Thanks thanks. I have these backups of my current media... preferably would want to do thisAlpha build, and then as the project matures it will allow in place upgrades, might be allot easier that going TrueNAS CORE and then still have to migrate later to get the docker capabilities.

As far as storage is concerned, I have what I have, 1 x 128GB M.2 and then 5, no make that 6 x 4TB Ironwolf drives.

Primary usage is Home videos, docs, files, photos, mp3's and then a large Plex media server and second it runs my Unify Controller and when I feel bored a home IT lab, which mostly done via docker images.

will try and do as much of the above reading as i can. hopefully y xPenology stays stable enough for me to make a decision and not be a forced event.

G

 

[georgelza]

just realised as I'm busy playing with creating a test VM, in xPenology the OS sits on a USB stick, and then as part of each drive there is a OS copy, Is the same possible here, of do I have to assign a dedicated drive to the OS, which might mean I change my 128GB M.2 to being OS + Cache + ???