First NAS build

[synio]

I'm thinking about building a NAS based on TrueNAS SCALE.

But this would be my first time building a hardware system from scratch.
I'm also not familiar with ZFS and NAS in general.

What I am looking for in a NAS:
- Media storage (video, audio, photo) accessible from SMB, NFS etc
- Play videos stored on NAS on smart TV
- Secure local back-ups of work and private data
- Share documents in internal network using something like NextCloud
- Home Assistant with Node-Red and USB peripherals (RF transmitter, Zigbee stick...)
- Maybe CCTV for the cameras around our house
- Maybe use it to quickly deploy local development version of web projects through Docker

Reasons I would prefer TrueNAS over off-the-shelf like Synology:
- I'm an advocate of using open source technology and the freedom it gives you
- Feeling that Synology would not be as flexible or configurable
- Feeling that Synology might not be performant enough for some of my requirements
- Rather high cost if you look at the actual hardware you are ending up with

Reasons I would prefer TrueNAS SCALE over CORE:
- I have a lot of experience with server-side Linux, and Debian specifically
- I want to run Dockerized apps (like Home Assistant) with USB pass-through (SCALE Bluefin RC)

Current hardware and configuration I have in mind:
- This is based on the information in the `2021-01 Edition Revision 2a` document.
- Fractal Design Node 804 cube case (micro-ATX) (because I would prefer a smaller case and it looks pretty good, although a bigger case would certainly be acceptable too if that would be much better in terms of performance for same price or lower cost for same performance)
- Supermicro X11SSM-F Intel® C236 LGA 1151 (because it was one of the recommended motherboards in the document, I don't really have a strong preference over any, I want to start out with 2 disks but perhaps maybe later I would like to add 2 more)
- Intel® Core™ i3-9100F Processor (because it supports ECC memory, and I think it's the latest i3 generation that works with LGA 1151 motherboards?)
- Crucial MTA9ASF2G72AZ-3G2R 16 GB ECC DDR 4 3200 MHz UDIMM (16 GB ECC memory, single module because I might want to add another 16 GB module in the future)
- Seasonic Focus GX-550 PSU (because I read that 550W should be more than enough for my requirements, and 550W is the lowest I could find today)
- Samsung 870 EVO 2,5 inch 250GB SSD (for booting TrueNAS SCALE, I think I also might need an extra cable to connect it to the motherboard?)
- 2x WD Red Plus 3,5" NAS HDD (for storage, in RAID-1 configuration, thinking about getting 4 TB right now since that would be more than enough right now)

Questions:
- Could TrueNAS SCALE be a valid choice for me?
- Can I use newer hardware or would that not be a good idea? for example newer generation i3? because I found some i3 and i5 newer generations that also support ECC memory but then another motherboard would be required instead of `LGA 1151`, but I don't really understand all the implications of that. So right now I have focused on the recommendations in the `2021-01 Edition Revision 2a` document for my hardware choices.
- Does it matter that the memory is 3200 MHz and the motherboard mentions 2400 MHz? I thought not, but that speed would then be limited to 2400 MHz? I couldn't easily find ECC ram modules for 2400 MHz specifically.
- For my intended usage, would the hardware choices be OK, or is something overkill or should I upgrade something?
- Do I need anything else in terms of hardware? maybe some extra cables as well?
- Would RAID-1 make most sense? The data is not *super* important, but I do want to have a full back-up disk available when one of the disks fails, which is why I wanted to go with RAID-1. I also read about RAIDZ1 but I feel like it wouldn't make much sense to use that instead of RAID-1 for my usecase?

Thanks if you want to look into it and give me some advice.

 

[synio]

Something new i found out: After reading a bit more about the motherboard it sounds like i should use an older i3 or get a newer motherboard based on C24x to support the i3 i mentioned?

 

[synio]

I don't think I can edit my other posts on this forum (yet?). Right now I'm thinking of replacing the motherboard with X11SCL-F so that the i3-9100F should be supported.

 

[MisterE2002]

coffee lakes processors only work on coffe lake motherboards indeed. TrueNAS is more flexible but also more tweaking is required. Permissions are always a challenge. Things are abstracted by companies like Synology. Only you can make this choice.
Maybe start with a Virtual Machine and experiment a bit.
SCALE is still immature and containers are somewhat basic. You can also opt for a Promox/Portainer setup or something. But running the ("download") apps on the storage itself has many benefits as well.

If running apps i would at bare minimum use 32GB. 64 or 128 are not that crazy for active systems. Certainly if you are going to use VM's. (Those reserve the memory completely)

 

[synio]

Thank you for looking into it, @MisterE2002

I'm not planning on running any VMs on TrueNAS, only Docker containers, which should be a lot lighter.

But I will take the 32 GB recommendation into account.
If 'DIMM Sizes' on the Supermicro motherboard spec sheet says '4GB, 8GB, 16GB'
then I suppose I should install 2x 16 GB to get 32 GB? I can't install a single 32 GB module, right?
64 GB seems to be the upper limit for this motherboard though, but I reckon that this should be enough for my purposes.

I'm now also thinking of using RAIDZ1 with 3 drives instead of simple RAID-1 mirroring.
Reason being that the cost per TB would be lower.
If I understand correctly, then I should be able to use 8 out of 12 TB if I install 4 TB disks in RAIDZ1, right?
And any 1 of the disks can fail without data loss?
I think that might be a better deal for me than RAID-1 with 2 drives.

 

[MisterE2002]

I have the same X11SCL-F with 2x32 GB (KSM26ED8/32HC) and 2 slots free. So 128GB is possible. Dual channel is always preferred. Currently the price is declining in Europe.

With Z1 you indeed loose 1 drive of capacity (note parity is spread across all drives). Z1 usually is not recommended because the possibility that another drive fails when resilvering the first replaced drive. Bigger drives increases the resilver time. You are using small drives and you are stating that not that important data so the risk seems acceptable.

Note, if you have to buy new drives. I think 4GB are relative expensive. 18TB is per Gb the cheapest. Here in Europe the Enterprise drives are fairly cheap (Toshiba MG09 and Seagate EXOS).

 

[ChrisRJ]

One aspect you should be aware of is that TrueNAS (Core as well as Scale) is an appliance. One consequence of this is that you cannot simply install arbitrary software. So just running apt-get install ... will either not work at all, or break things (if not now, then likely down the road).

If you want a lot of flexibility, and your list of intended usages seems to indicate this, you should also consider a plain Linux box. What made you look into the direction of a dedicated NAS in the first place?

 

[synio]

I think most of my intended usages are actually available as standard add-ons with TrueNAS SCALE.

It's not really a big problem for me that I cannot install software the normal Linux/Debian way either. I work a lot with Docker and K8s so embracing this workflow for running the extra software I need on my NAS could actually be a good workflow for me.

That said, *maybe* a plain Linux box could be a better solution. I am actually looking for 2 things:
- Home Automation
- NAS for all kinds of local storage

I don't necessarily need an excessive amount of TB but I do want my local data to be relatively safe.
The really important stuff is also backed up to the cloud as an extra safeguard though.

Anyway, I researched home automation first with Home Assistant, and I quickly found out that many people are using Raspberry Pi and other small computers. I also experimented with that myself. But it became clear to me that if I wanted to run the home automation system 24/7 and if I wanted it to run stable and fast enough for my purposes (there's also video encoding running for some cameras for example, and quite a few Portainer/Docker things inside of Home Assistant) then I would need a much beefier setup.

Then I also came across the need for secure local storage and to make media accessible to all devices at home easily. After looking at off-the-shelf solutions like Synology I realized that setting up TrueNAS SCALE might give me more flexibility and also better 'bang for the buck' in this area.

I also like the fact that I might be able to take care of home automation and NAS on the same box.

It is true that I could also install a normal Linux server instead, and install ZFS (or something simpler like BTRFS) on it with a RAID-1 setup and configure services to work similar to a NAS. But I honestly think that would be a complicated setup to manage myself and that TrueNAS as the core OS would take care of that very well because it's designed for it. Loading and using Home Assistant and other Docker stuff using containers on top of TrueNAS would probably be a lot simpler than setting up a Linux/Debian server and then configuring all NAS-related functionality myself. Also, Home Assistant is designed to work well in Docker. TrueCharts should support everything I need related to that. (Well, I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it would)

So that's why I'm currently looking at a TrueNAS SCALE setup.

I might be wrong in my choices of course. Feel free to point it out if you think I'm not on the right track. I haven't made a final decision regarding this yet. And I'm still open to alternatives.

 

[ChrisRJ]

On the point of using Docker: I am not sure, since I don't use Scale myself. But you should check whether or not arbitrary Docker images can be used. It may(!) be the case that only specially packaged stuff (k3s?) works. Again, I may be totally wrong here.

 

[synio]

@ChrisRJ The stuff available in TrueCharts would suffice for me for now. But I saw a video that you can load any Docker image from any Docker repo using the standard TrueNAS SCALE install ('Launch Docker Image' button).

 

[Etorix]

- Fractal Design Node 804 cube case (micro-ATX) (because I would prefer a smaller case and it looks pretty good, although a bigger case would certainly be acceptable too if that would be much better in terms of performance for same price or lower cost for same performance)

Fine, but not quiet.

- Supermicro X11SSM-F Intel® C236 LGA 1151 (because it was one of the recommended motherboards in the document, I don't really have a strong preference over any, I want to start out with 2 disks but perhaps maybe later I would like to add 2 more)
- Intel® Core™ i3-9100F Processor (because it supports ECC memory, and I think it's the latest i3 generation that works with LGA 1151 motherboards?)

As you already found out, it's X11SSM with Skylake/Kaby Lake 6/7th gen. or X11SCM with Coffee Lake 8/9th gen. Whichever is still available at non-inflated prices.

- Seasonic Focus GX-550 PSU (because I read that 550W should be more than enough for my requirements, and 550W is the lowest I could find today)

If you ever intend to fill the case with 8-10 drives, consider bumping the PSU to 650 W.

Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance

I've seen about 1,000 threads like this one where people decide that they can power a dozen hard drives off a 360 watt supply. DO NOT DO THIS. I've seen another 1,000 threads where people decide to buy the cheapest power supply that they can...

www.truenas.com

- Does it matter that the memory is 3200 MHz and the motherboard mentions 2400 MHz? I thought not, but that speed would then be limited to 2400 MHz? I couldn't easily find ECC ram modules for 2400 MHz specifically.

Higher spec RAM is fine. You may also have a look at second hand (e.g. on tweakers.net), but make sure NOT to go for Registered DIMM (RDIMM) when looking for ECC: Core i3 can only use UDIMM.
Single DIMM is possible, but filling both memory channels is better. 64 GB can be 4*16 GB with 2 DIMM per channel.

- Would RAID-1 make most sense? The data is not *super* important, but I do want to have a full back-up disk available when one of the disks fails, which is why I wanted to go with RAID-1. I also read about RAIDZ1 but I feel like it wouldn't make much sense to use that instead of RAID-1 for my usecase?

You need redundancy. Mirrors (not "RAID1" with ZFS) are flexible, but not very efficient for bulk storage. Raidz is better for bulk storage, but requires more drives. Raidz1 is advised against as drives go larger; raidz2 is safer—in your case, that would be one large vdev of 8-10 drives, or a 4- or 5-wide raidz2 vdev, with similar space efficiency to 2-way mirrors and the possibility to add a second vdev later for more capacity.
For your containers/VMs, you may consider a dedicated pool with a mirror of two SSDs—or even a single SSD, with backup to HDD pool.

 

[Torrone]

I confirm that they are a lot of image on TrueCharts or you can use your own Docker image but it's not like using it on Debian. There are TrueNAS specificities and you have to take the time to see how to manage the different types of storage, permissions, connections, etc.

It's a bit weird because not everything is accessible from the GUI and not everything that is possible from the GUI gives a stable configuration. If you are already used to deploying docker images under linux, it is not necessarily more convenient.

You have to take the time to read the TrueCharts doc to understand the restrictions not exposed in the GUI.