A few years back I build a homeserver using a SuperMicro X11SCL-F motherboard, a Xeon E3-1245 v6, 64GB ECC memory, 16GB optane M10 memory (passthrough for TrueNAS ZIL/SLOG), a 500GB m.2 NVME SSD for the OS and VM-storage and 6x 4TB WD RED Plus HDD's (passthrough for TrueNAS ZSF RAIDZ2 pool). Under ESXi 7.0 I ran several VM's (stored on the NVME) including a virtulized FreeNAS/TrueNAS Core. This is a 24/7 available server doing most of the time only a little logging and some Home Automation. Conclusion: a "little" overkill at this moment.
I am a bit concerned about the energy consuption. Maybe because of the hypervisor and maybe because of (the lack of) proper tuning, but it has troubles using low power states and uses almost 5 kWh a day (annually around 1600kWh).
Because energy prices have risen considerably and this home server is much too heavy for my use case, I am looking for a more energy-efficient solution.
I am considering cleaning my SuperMicro server, equipping it with TrueNAS Scale (bare metal) and having it come up once a week (for a few hours) acting as a backup-NAS and doing it's maintenance.
In addition, I recently acquired a NUC 13 Pro (NUC13ANHi3). I want to provide this NUC with a Proxmox VE 8.0 hypervisor with a number of VMs including TrueNAS Scale (as 24/7 available NAS).
I mainly use my NAS for storing and now and then viewing (family) photos and videos. Furthermore, some media player-related matters (movies and music), newsgroup-stuff and some coding projects. As far as data retention is concerned, I consider the former and latter category to be the most important.
Although this NUC is more than sufficient in terms of i/o, it has a bit too few connections for storage. Internal connectors are: 1x M.2 2280 NVME PCIe 4.0 x4, 1x M.2 SATA 2240 PCIe 3.0 x1, 1x SATA (SATA-600).
I know that virtualizing a NAS isn't the most secure option. Also using consumer grade material isn't.
The question is therefore relative: I'm wondering how to best utilize my options.
I can't hardly find any SSD for the M.2-SATA 2240 slot, so I consider this useless (in terms of storage).
What comes to mind is:
A. 1x SATA SSD (2-4TB) as boot-drive for OS and to store the VM's. 1x M.2 NVME SSD (2-4TB) passthrough to the TrueNAS-VM for NAS-storage. Both with the ZFS fs. Active monitoring of the health of the disks and the data. In case of data-corruption a manual repair or disc replacement. Is it possible to only (incremental) backup the clean data to the back-up server, or do I run the risk of overwriting clean data with a corrupted version of it?
B. 1x SATA SSD (4TB) and 1x M.2 NVME SSD (4TB) as a mirrored ZSF pool. The virtualized TrueNAS then doesn't have baremetal storage available.
C. 1x SATA SSD (2-4TB) as boot-drive for OS and to store the VM's. 1x HBA-controller in the M.2 NVME 2280 interface with 2-5 sata-connections. External enclosure for 2-5 sata disks. It is a pity that a messy amount of cables come out of the NUC device. Furthermore, it is difficult to provide power to the disks on time.
D. Utilizing the NVME (possibly combined with the SATA) as a ZFS boot and VM-storage (whether or not as a mirror). Adding 2 external enclosures voor SATA or NVME SSD, connected by USB-c (Thunderbold is too expensive and not utilized in my Gbit home-environment), acting as a mirrored ZFS pool for the NAS.
E. Otherwise, not thought of.
Do you have suggestions? Thank you in advance!
I am a bit concerned about the energy consuption. Maybe because of the hypervisor and maybe because of (the lack of) proper tuning, but it has troubles using low power states and uses almost 5 kWh a day (annually around 1600kWh).
Because energy prices have risen considerably and this home server is much too heavy for my use case, I am looking for a more energy-efficient solution.
I am considering cleaning my SuperMicro server, equipping it with TrueNAS Scale (bare metal) and having it come up once a week (for a few hours) acting as a backup-NAS and doing it's maintenance.
In addition, I recently acquired a NUC 13 Pro (NUC13ANHi3). I want to provide this NUC with a Proxmox VE 8.0 hypervisor with a number of VMs including TrueNAS Scale (as 24/7 available NAS).
I mainly use my NAS for storing and now and then viewing (family) photos and videos. Furthermore, some media player-related matters (movies and music), newsgroup-stuff and some coding projects. As far as data retention is concerned, I consider the former and latter category to be the most important.
Although this NUC is more than sufficient in terms of i/o, it has a bit too few connections for storage. Internal connectors are: 1x M.2 2280 NVME PCIe 4.0 x4, 1x M.2 SATA 2240 PCIe 3.0 x1, 1x SATA (SATA-600).
I know that virtualizing a NAS isn't the most secure option. Also using consumer grade material isn't.
The question is therefore relative: I'm wondering how to best utilize my options.
I can't hardly find any SSD for the M.2-SATA 2240 slot, so I consider this useless (in terms of storage).
What comes to mind is:
A. 1x SATA SSD (2-4TB) as boot-drive for OS and to store the VM's. 1x M.2 NVME SSD (2-4TB) passthrough to the TrueNAS-VM for NAS-storage. Both with the ZFS fs. Active monitoring of the health of the disks and the data. In case of data-corruption a manual repair or disc replacement. Is it possible to only (incremental) backup the clean data to the back-up server, or do I run the risk of overwriting clean data with a corrupted version of it?
B. 1x SATA SSD (4TB) and 1x M.2 NVME SSD (4TB) as a mirrored ZSF pool. The virtualized TrueNAS then doesn't have baremetal storage available.
C. 1x SATA SSD (2-4TB) as boot-drive for OS and to store the VM's. 1x HBA-controller in the M.2 NVME 2280 interface with 2-5 sata-connections. External enclosure for 2-5 sata disks. It is a pity that a messy amount of cables come out of the NUC device. Furthermore, it is difficult to provide power to the disks on time.
D. Utilizing the NVME (possibly combined with the SATA) as a ZFS boot and VM-storage (whether or not as a mirror). Adding 2 external enclosures voor SATA or NVME SSD, connected by USB-c (Thunderbold is too expensive and not utilized in my Gbit home-environment), acting as a mirrored ZFS pool for the NAS.
E. Otherwise, not thought of.
Do you have suggestions? Thank you in advance!
