Advise on new setup for optimal performance

[Grinas]

So this is my current setup and which is slowly running out of space.

Running TrueNAS-Scale-23 as VM in ESXI 6.7
CASE and MB: DELL T20
CPU: E3-1225v3
RAM: 32GB ECC RAM 26GB reserved to Truenas VM
HDD: 2 * 3 TB WD RED HDD - RAIDZ1
HDD: 2 * 4 TB WD PURPLE HDD - RAIDZ1
HDD: 2 * 4 TB WD RED HDD - RAIDZ1
Spare 4 TB Toshiba HDD
All of the above are in 2 x RAIDZ1 | 3 wide | Mixed Capacity
HBA Card: LSI 9217-8i in IT mode
PSU: 500W EVGA, 80 PLUS




My 2 * 3TB look to be on the way out so i bought 2 10TB seagate surveillance drives to replace them but since purchasing them I found that i can get 16TB exos x16 through my companies main distributor for only double the price of 4 TB WD REDs and less than i paid for the 10TB drives. These are OEM but the RMA should not be a problem if something goes wrong the disti said.

My plan is to start from scratch with the 2 * 10TB drives and 2-3 of the 16TB. Is it in my best interest here to just not use the smaller drives? Some of these are less than a year old and i really would like to get some use out of them as due to my location and taxes i ended up paying over €100 for each of them.

Also i have a couple of 1TB SSDs lying around. Is it worth my while using one for cache or is that a waste of one of my 8 sata connection since my main use case with this NAS is data hoarding and running some apps like Photo-Prisim, Unifi controller, qbit and a couple of web apps?

 

[Arwen]

First, unless you know you need a L2ARC / Cache drive, you don't need one.

Next, make certain your WD Red and Purple drives are not SMR, Shingled Magnetic Recording, type drives. They, (SMR), are not suitable for use with ZFS. Plus, check your 4 TB Toshiba HDD too.

Your choice of larger, newer drives verses smaller, older drives is something you have to decide. But, the larger the drives, the more recommendation for 2 disks of redundancy, (RAID-Z2 or 3 way Mirrors).

 

[Grinas]

From what i found online if a drive supports TRIM it is SMR. Seems only one of my drives supports TRIM so the rest must not be SMR.

Code:

root@truenas[~]# smartctl -a /dev/sdh
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-6.1.63-production+truenas] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD42PURZ-85B4YY0
Serial Number:    WD-WX32D917Z45D
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 269f574a5
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    4,000,787,030,016 bytes [4.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5040 rpm
Form Factor:      3.5 inches
TRIM Command:     Available
Device is:        Not in smartctl database 7.3/5319
ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Wed Jan 31 09:30:36 2024 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)    Offline data collection activity
                    was never started.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)    The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:         ( 1800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)    Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)    Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      ( 438) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x3039)    SCT Status supported.
                    SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
                    SCT Feature Control supported.
                    SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   211   205   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       2425
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       57
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   082   082   000    Old_age   Always       -       13193
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       56
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       54
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   119   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      9399         -
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      9202         -
# 3  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%      9175         -
# 4  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%        46         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

 

[Arwen]

A simple google search found that the drive;
Device Model: WDC WD42PURZ
Is CMR, not SMR.

Their is no reason you can't do the search yourself for the other disks.