Hello,
I'm fairly new to TrueNAS and SAS (I did read through the sticky posts and HW guides to get myself familiarized) in general although not new to building my own rigs. I have read and re-read through so many various builds/recommendations and guides that my head's spinning at the moment. I would like to get a sniff test from the community at large on what I've settled on below if possible to get a clear idea of the path I'm going down and thank you in advance.
Existing Setup:
TrueNAS Core 12 - Stable
Dell PowerEdge T20 Xeon E3-1225v3
32 GB ECC UDIMM DDR3
256GB Sandisk SATA III SSD (TrueNAS Installed on this)
3x WD RED 2TB Drives in a RaidZ1 pool (This is temporary as I'm still getting used to TrueNAS's way of doing things)
What I want to add to this setup:
JBOD Enclosure for 6+ extra WD REDs
Case: CoolerMaster N400 Mid-Tower ATX Case
Power: EVGA 600W Bronze w/ enough SATA power connectors (
Drives: 6x4TB SATA WD Red Plus (Non SMR) drives
HBA for existing server: DELL H200E (LSI 9200-8E/9211-8E) Flashed to IT Mode
SAS Expander: HP 24-Bay 3Gb SAS Expander PCI Card 1-External SAS Port 487738-001 468406-B21
Power Control Board: Supermicro Power board for JBOD cse-ptjbod-cb2
Cables: Various breakout cables SFF8088 between the two cases and SAS to SATA breakouts for the drives. I have not done a final tally on what's needed yet tbh
Finally, all of this is due to my QNAP setup (QTS-651) reaching EoL mid 2022 and given the latest wave of ransomware I figured it's time to move and give me time to iron out any issues prior to migrating. I am also aware that I could technically install TrueNAS on a DOM within the QNAP but I'll leave that for a future project for now.
Not sure if it hurts or helps but budget is an issue here... I'd like to keep it under $400 in parts for the JBOD setup not including the drives themselves. I have a "sunk" cost in my T20 since I'm repurposing it and the motherboard isn't necessarily transferable without a lot of mods to the new case and I do realize that I may be introducing multiple points of failure in this setup but I'm OK with that. I do follow a 3/2/1 backup system so data integrity/availability isn't an issue.
Thank you for reading this far and I apologize in advance if I committed any faux-pas in this post. Any guidance would be great.
I'm fairly new to TrueNAS and SAS (I did read through the sticky posts and HW guides to get myself familiarized) in general although not new to building my own rigs. I have read and re-read through so many various builds/recommendations and guides that my head's spinning at the moment. I would like to get a sniff test from the community at large on what I've settled on below if possible to get a clear idea of the path I'm going down and thank you in advance.
Existing Setup:
TrueNAS Core 12 - Stable
Dell PowerEdge T20 Xeon E3-1225v3
32 GB ECC UDIMM DDR3
256GB Sandisk SATA III SSD (TrueNAS Installed on this)
3x WD RED 2TB Drives in a RaidZ1 pool (This is temporary as I'm still getting used to TrueNAS's way of doing things)
What I want to add to this setup:
JBOD Enclosure for 6+ extra WD REDs
Case: CoolerMaster N400 Mid-Tower ATX Case
Power: EVGA 600W Bronze w/ enough SATA power connectors (
Drives: 6x4TB SATA WD Red Plus (Non SMR) drives
HBA for existing server: DELL H200E (LSI 9200-8E/9211-8E) Flashed to IT Mode
SAS Expander: HP 24-Bay 3Gb SAS Expander PCI Card 1-External SAS Port 487738-001 468406-B21
Power Control Board: Supermicro Power board for JBOD cse-ptjbod-cb2
Cables: Various breakout cables SFF8088 between the two cases and SAS to SATA breakouts for the drives. I have not done a final tally on what's needed yet tbh
- From reading through other posts and from what I can tell the Dell H200e in IT mode seems to be a safe choice ( I think/I hope?).
- The real issue for me is the SAS Expander.. This is one of the few expanders that has an external connection. All the others I've seen seem to only have internal ports which would make the setup a little "messy" having to route the cable from the HBA in my server chassis in through the JBOD case to the port on the expander. Am I missing something here? I'm also concerned on whether the SAS expander can "see" 4TB+ Drives... a few posts indicated that it would, esp if flashed to the latest FW.
- The supermicro JBOD controller is super expensive but is the cleanest. As an alternative I was thinking of buying a cheap used Supermicro motherboard with IPMI in the hopes that I could control the Fans, Power Supply as well provide power to the SAS expander without having a CPU in it. (Supermicro X8SIE-F). Could this alternative approach potentially work?
Finally, all of this is due to my QNAP setup (QTS-651) reaching EoL mid 2022 and given the latest wave of ransomware I figured it's time to move and give me time to iron out any issues prior to migrating. I am also aware that I could technically install TrueNAS on a DOM within the QNAP but I'll leave that for a future project for now.
Not sure if it hurts or helps but budget is an issue here... I'd like to keep it under $400 in parts for the JBOD setup not including the drives themselves. I have a "sunk" cost in my T20 since I'm repurposing it and the motherboard isn't necessarily transferable without a lot of mods to the new case and I do realize that I may be introducing multiple points of failure in this setup but I'm OK with that. I do follow a 3/2/1 backup system so data integrity/availability isn't an issue.
Thank you for reading this far and I apologize in advance if I committed any faux-pas in this post. Any guidance would be great.
