Hey Folks. I know this has been asked a million times, but situation is obviously different from anyone else's, so I am looking for ideas.
I live in a loft type of space and everything is kind of in the open. I don't want to make my living space sound like the airport, I don't want to heat up my home from my equipment, and I also don't want to pay twice for my electrical bill. I have a small lab now. It's basically just my workstation inside a 4U server chassis with lots of good hardware running W11 + VMware Workstation > ESXi > vCenter > Plex, etc. I am ready to build things out and take it to the next level. I've been in IT for almost 20 years, so I am not new to this. It's just that I've always been fortunate to run to have a lot of toys in the production environments I worked at. But I am building this out for myself now. This is going to be part lab, part permanent infrastructure.
I have two 4U Chassis. One is already being used for my workstation and the second one is going to be a NAS running TrueNAS (Plex, VMware Storage, few other things, but nothing too crazy or intensive).
For this NAS build, I am about to start buying hardware. It's a pretty nice chassis actually and very roomy. I will have about five 6-8TB drives for storage (and redundant flash storage for the OS). It's been ages since I dealt with hardware, so I am not up to date on what the latest and greatest is. And since most of my stuff has been virtualized for a while, I don't know what are some recommendations and best practices for TrueNAS (Yes, I read the minimum requirements docs). I was going to use 2 OG SATA drives to mirror the OS, but I am not sure if modern motherboards come with multiple M.2 slots or not. That would be sweet. Also, since there will be a bunch of drives, I doubt motherboards have that many SATA ports on them. So probably will have to buy SAS\SATA controller.
So my question is what CPU would you recommend I run? Does it have to be server grade or is i5/i7/i9 sufficient? I am not looking to spend too much money, but I can spend some money. It just doesn't have to be overkill. I am not showing off to anyone and I am not a gamer. It's strictly for Plex, VMware storage, backups, few other things. My main concern is not to get killed on the electrical bill. I live in LA and things are a little pricey these days. I will also be adding a proper rackable UPS, and later on 2 physical servers (hopefully also quiet and low power) for a physical VMware or Proxmox environments. But for now, I am just building out my NAS. What CPU (Mobo, Mem) would you recommend? ECC, yes or no? Also, would you recommend discreet GPU or not? Most of my Plex media is 1080. I don't really need too much transcoding. Not exactly sure on the details of how and when its needed, but that's also something I am trying to think about. Too many options and I sort of lost.
PS. Not including PSU, SAS\SATA Controller, or any other components, I am just talking about CPU\Motherboard\Memory, my budget is about $500-$600 (Def flexible, but I am not looking to spend too much either).
Remembered something else: I have a number of 4TB NAS drives I bought last year, but they are all 5900 RPM. Should I ditch them go for 7200 or is 5900 enough for streaming, VMware storage, etc?
Thank you very much in advance!
I live in a loft type of space and everything is kind of in the open. I don't want to make my living space sound like the airport, I don't want to heat up my home from my equipment, and I also don't want to pay twice for my electrical bill. I have a small lab now. It's basically just my workstation inside a 4U server chassis with lots of good hardware running W11 + VMware Workstation > ESXi > vCenter > Plex, etc. I am ready to build things out and take it to the next level. I've been in IT for almost 20 years, so I am not new to this. It's just that I've always been fortunate to run to have a lot of toys in the production environments I worked at. But I am building this out for myself now. This is going to be part lab, part permanent infrastructure.
I have two 4U Chassis. One is already being used for my workstation and the second one is going to be a NAS running TrueNAS (Plex, VMware Storage, few other things, but nothing too crazy or intensive).
For this NAS build, I am about to start buying hardware. It's a pretty nice chassis actually and very roomy. I will have about five 6-8TB drives for storage (and redundant flash storage for the OS). It's been ages since I dealt with hardware, so I am not up to date on what the latest and greatest is. And since most of my stuff has been virtualized for a while, I don't know what are some recommendations and best practices for TrueNAS (Yes, I read the minimum requirements docs). I was going to use 2 OG SATA drives to mirror the OS, but I am not sure if modern motherboards come with multiple M.2 slots or not. That would be sweet. Also, since there will be a bunch of drives, I doubt motherboards have that many SATA ports on them. So probably will have to buy SAS\SATA controller.
So my question is what CPU would you recommend I run? Does it have to be server grade or is i5/i7/i9 sufficient? I am not looking to spend too much money, but I can spend some money. It just doesn't have to be overkill. I am not showing off to anyone and I am not a gamer. It's strictly for Plex, VMware storage, backups, few other things. My main concern is not to get killed on the electrical bill. I live in LA and things are a little pricey these days. I will also be adding a proper rackable UPS, and later on 2 physical servers (hopefully also quiet and low power) for a physical VMware or Proxmox environments. But for now, I am just building out my NAS. What CPU (Mobo, Mem) would you recommend? ECC, yes or no? Also, would you recommend discreet GPU or not? Most of my Plex media is 1080. I don't really need too much transcoding. Not exactly sure on the details of how and when its needed, but that's also something I am trying to think about. Too many options and I sort of lost.
PS. Not including PSU, SAS\SATA Controller, or any other components, I am just talking about CPU\Motherboard\Memory, my budget is about $500-$600 (Def flexible, but I am not looking to spend too much either).
Remembered something else: I have a number of 4TB NAS drives I bought last year, but they are all 5900 RPM. Should I ditch them go for 7200 or is 5900 enough for streaming, VMware storage, etc?
Thank you very much in advance!
