Hi all,
new user here!
I have an Unraid server at home which I have been using to store all my data and provide services for a few years.
It's built around an ancient Gigabyte J3455 mini-itx low-cost motherboard, with a few 3TB drives attached, and an SSD for write caching.
So far it's been serving me very well, but it's showing its age, so I want to upgrade.
The new server should not do anything more than the current one does (fairly well), it should just do it better.
Plus, I'd love to get my hands dirty with ZFS (which I have never tried), so... I want to try out TrueNAS Scale.
I'm very comfortable with Linux machines and with building hardware, but the hardware choice is proving though (yes, of course I read the hardware guide!). I would love any help and suggestion!
The usecases for my server would be:
As a complete ZFS and TrueNAS noob, I'd love any pointer in the right direction.
Thank in advance for any suggestion!
new user here!
I have an Unraid server at home which I have been using to store all my data and provide services for a few years.
It's built around an ancient Gigabyte J3455 mini-itx low-cost motherboard, with a few 3TB drives attached, and an SSD for write caching.
So far it's been serving me very well, but it's showing its age, so I want to upgrade.
The new server should not do anything more than the current one does (fairly well), it should just do it better.
Plus, I'd love to get my hands dirty with ZFS (which I have never tried), so... I want to try out TrueNAS Scale.
I'm very comfortable with Linux machines and with building hardware, but the hardware choice is proving though (yes, of course I read the hardware guide!). I would love any help and suggestion!
The usecases for my server would be:
- media streaming, mostly in-house, with limited transcoding
- nextcloud and file sharing
- torrenting
- other misc services such as teamspeak, authelia, vaultwarden, traccar, home automation and the like. Nothing resource-heavy.
- and of course, storing data safely!
- Form factor should be mini-ITX or microATX, due to limitations in my enclosure (it's actually a modified Ikea cabinet drawer).
- low-power components (power is very expensive where I live). This means:
- The target power consumption should be <25W at idle. Idle power is the most important metric in this regard since the system is going to stay idle for most of the time.
- Peak power consumption should be <150W, so I can use a picoPSU.
- I should probably use as few components as possible.
- Not sure yet whether it's best to go AMD (something like a 5650G) or Intel (Alder Lake?). I will need some integrated GPU due to media transcoding and encoding needs. AMD seems more competitive in terms of price-to-performance (especially with ECC support), Intel is probably going to use less power at idle.
- Hard drives should spin down as much as possible. In Unraid, this is accomplished with an SSD write cache and a daily mover script, but from my understanding this is not available in ZFS, right? Thus, I'll probably need an SSD pool for stuff like torrenting and nextcloud, while limiting HD access to media usage and backups (mostly 1-2h a day). Is this correct? I could use a SLOG but from what I read it would probably be overkill for my usecase, right?
- Total storage should be ~12TB. Not sure if I'm going for a 2x12TB mirror or a 3x6TB or 3x8TB raid-Z1. Might decide depending on which offers I find.
- I do not need double redundancy since everything will be remotely backed up nightly.
- I currently have no use for >1Gbps LAN, but that might change in the future. Future-proofness would be awesome, especially since of the limited expandibility of the chosen form factor.
- The conventional wisdom is that for such a small server, I don't need L2ARC. Now that it is persistent (with ZFS 2.0), though... is it a good choice? Thinking of a 1TB NVMe SSD to accelerate frequent access to stored media, for example.
- My last server has been going strong (well, it's a Celeron J3455, not exactly strong...) for 5 years. I want this investment to last at least as long.
- Motherboard choice is very hard, especially due to the form factor and low power requirements. This very useful video links to this german forum post and this google sheet, with some data. A good place to start, but still I would love any suggestion in this regard! The motherboard market is a mess and it's hard to find motherboards that fit my usecase perfectly:
- low power
- reasonably priced (in relation to the meager amount of storage I'm putting in)
- no need for IPMI (and it uses too much power, AFAIK)
- at least 4 SATA
- Some M.2, to use for boot, fast pool, SLOG, metadata device or L2ARC if I need them. PCI-ex expandibility to add them later is fine.
- ECC support
- doesn't cost as much as the rest of the system combined! For example, the Asrock Rack X570D4U-2L2T/BCM would seem a good choice, but it would be very overbudget (>500€) for what I need.
- If I can, I'm going to use ECC memory, probably DDR4, probably 32GB. The problem is finding a motherboard that supports ECC and all the features I want!
As a complete ZFS and TrueNAS noob, I'd love any pointer in the right direction.
- Are my goals completely unattainable?
- Do you have any motherboard suggestion? I can't seem to find a motherboard-CPU combo that is relatively recent, has ECC support and does not cost an arm and a leg.
- Do I need an SSD pool to act as a write cache so that I can reduce the time the drives are spinning (especially for torrent downloads)? And/or, do you have any pointer to how to mimic Unraid's mover behaviour, which works well in my usecase?
- Would a large, persistent L2ARC help in reducing the need to spinup the drives?
- Do I need to shop for used goods? Any good pointer for where to do that in the EU? Is eBay my best bet? Any particular CPU and/or motherboard model that usually pops up as particularly affordable?
- Anything else that comes to mind?
Thank in advance for any suggestion!