Beginner seeking advice on how to best utilize existing hardware

[hgpuke]

Hi!
After trying out both Openmediavault, Unraid and Proxmox, I have finally set for TrueNAS Scale as my server operating system of choice.
The aim is to replace my current Synology DiskStation DS916+ with something that is more future-proof.
I find TrueNAS to be a terrific operating environment, meeting all my needs, however it is a bit more complicated to configure than the pre-built Synology NAS.
Therefore, I am seeking your advice on how to best make use of my existing hardware, which is:

• HP ProDesk G2 mini 400 - a mini-PC configured as follows:
  • Intel 4-core processor i5-6500T running at 2.5 GHz
  • 2 x 8GB RAM for a total of 16 GB
  • A Kingston M.2 NVME SSD, 512 GB in size
  • A Samsung SATA SSD, 256 GB in size
  • 1 Gb/s Ethernet connection
• A Fantec SATA disk-enclosure, connected to the PC via USB 3.1
  • 4 x 10 TB Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC510 256mb spinning hard-drives

I have everything up and running, but transfer speed over the network does not match what I currently get from my NAS. The NAS gives me approximately 100-110 MB/s on both read and write and the TrueNAS system gives me around 42 MB/s, but that is with a different set of disks than listed above, so it may not be representative.

I am planning the following tasks for the setup:

• General file-sharing on the LAN, using SMB (family uses both Windows and Macs)
• Media sharing using Plex
• Home automation using Home Assistant
• Photo library - something like Immich
• Possibly Next Cloud

Now to my must important question: How should I best make use of the two SSD drives that I have at my disposal. It seems that TrueNAS itself need one of them for itself. Would you propose to use the other one as a cache for a ZFS Pool making up the 4 spinning hard drives? Or a location for App-data (container-data)? Or something completely different?

Hoping for your support and understanding.

 

[chuck32]

Would you propose to use the other one as a cache for a ZFS Pool making up the 4 spinning hard drives? Or a location for App-data (container-data)? Or something completely different?

Primarily truenas uses RAM as cache. In some circumstances it may make sense to add a cache device. Most of the time it doesn't though. You can read about it here but for now it should not concern you.
Best use would be as an applications pool.

• A Fantec SATA disk-enclosure, connected to the PC via USB 3.1

USB connections are not recommended.

I didn't find information on whether you have free pci slots. Because for this system to work as a truenas system it would be best to not attach the disks via USB. What specific enclose do you have? I would imagine, although I don't use it myself, that something like that but with a SAS card could work.

 

[danb35]

Therefore, I am seeking your advice on how to best make use of my existing hardware, which is:

I hate to say it, but the best way to make use of that hardware with TrueNAS is to replace it with something more suitable for the application. If four spinners are all you're going to need, the HPE Microservers can be a good choice--probably the most compact choice out there for a four-bay system. If you anticipate needing more drives in the future, a used Dell T430/440 can also be reasonably economical and can give eight drive bays. Of course, you can go for larger rack-mount systems with lots of drives, but that doesn't sound like what you're looking for.

In terms of external drives, there are really only two good ways of doing this:

• An eSATA enclosure for a single disk (avoid enclosures that include SATA port multipliers), or
• A SAS enclosure with an expander backplane

The latter requires a SAS HBA to connect to it, but can give you dozens of drives.

 

[hgpuke]

Thanks chuck32 and danb35. Unfortunately the HP ProDesk mini is a miniature desktop PC without any PCI-slots, so I can't equip it with any cards (except for the M.2 NVME card already in there). I understand that TrueNAS (and Openmediavault for that matter) recommends against using a USB-connected harddisk enclosure. What I don't understand is why. Why is a USB connection inherently more error-prone than a SATA or SAS (or eSATA) connection? If it was a big problem, wouldn't the companies providing these cases go out of business? They have been in business for a number of years, and reading the reviews I can't find any complaints about unreliability (there are other complaints about noise-levels and such though).

So, at this point in time, I am going to give it a try, just because I already have these parts, and they seem to work. I am not decommissioning the Synology NAS for another year or so, so I will have plenty of time to see if it works out or not. Should it not work out, I am willing to toss the current hardware and get a "proper" server instead. Doing so, would make it more difficult to fit in my room, however, which is one of the reasons that I am reluctant to do it right now. Also, looking at HP Microserver pricing, and power-draw, it is not an attractive proposition to me. It may be that a used one would be feasible from a cost perspective, but these things draw a lot of power, and electricity costs. Better then, perhaps, to stick with Synology or QNAP.

Thanks for the tip on how to best use the second SSD.
But just to be a bit more curious: Would it not be possible to partition the NVME SSD and give TrueNAS just a small portion of it (as a boot partition), in order to be able to use it for storage?

 

[danb35]

I understand that TrueNAS (and Openmediavault for that matter) recommends against using a USB-connected harddisk enclosure. What I don't understand is why.

Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks

This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...

www.truenas.com

 

[hgpuke]

Thanks @danb35 for explaining the reasons why it may not be a good idea to use USB-connected disks. I appreciate you taking your time to explaining this to a newbie like myself.

I have read through that post thoroughly, and for most things stated there, I can either say "that does not apply to my case" or "yes, but we are talking about a home-server here, not an enterprise level storage solution". Also, my set-up will be backed-up daily to a NAS residing in my daughters house (using Rsync), so if things go south, I will not lose valuable data (just time).

So I will consider this to be "an experiment" at this point in time, and report back here in a year's time or so, how it went (if it didn't go bad before then, in which case I will report back earlier).

Again, thanks everyone for your help.

 

[sretalla]

I have read through that post thoroughly, and for most things stated there, I can either say "that does not apply to my case" or "yes, but we are talking about a home-server here, not an enterprise level storage solution". Also, my set-up will be backed-up daily to a NAS residing in my daughters house (using Rsync), so if things go south, I will not lose valuable data (just time).

Then you're planning to lose "time" by setting up as you are.

USB connection is acceptable for the boot pool or for seldom-used functions like a periodic backup, but USB controllers are simply not capable of handling the types of IO that ZFS wants to push to its disks in the long term, so will eventually burn out (I have a small graveyard of USB enclosures from when I thought that USB was tougher than people were saying).

It's your choice, but the experiment will end badly, just a question of when.

 

[hgpuke]

Then you're planning to lose "time" by setting up as you are.
...
It's your choice, but the experiment will end badly, just a question of when.

OK, understood. Maybe I'll think it over once more.