.Mira.
Cadet
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2023
- Messages
- 5
First off, I will admit right away that I am the stereotypical clueless layperson bumbling into these forums. I saw an article saying "Here's how you can convert old computer parts into a NAS!" and went "Wow, sounds great, sign me up!" fully unaware of the scope of considerations that ought to be made, and not realizing just how much I didn't know until the project was well underway and plenty of money had already been dropped. You may pause here to point and laugh at your screen, get it out of your system, but understand that I am extremely aware my current setup is far from optimal, and I will be asking for hardware recommendations later in the post. But I don't have the budget to drop hundreds more on computer parts right now, so my current setup will have to stand as-is for at least a couple months.
Currently my NAS has been up and running for several days. I have yet to experience any catastrophic issues or data loss, nothing is presently stored on it that's not duplicated elsewhere. What I'm seeking right now is preventative advice, and possible tweaks or optimizations to improve reliability. I've tried digging around and researching on the forums and documentation as much as I can, but I am not a smart woman and a lot of discussions and instructions are pretty impenetrable to me. It's hard to even tell sometimes what things are relevant to my particular situation. So I'm hoping that maybe some of you smart folks out there can help me get my stuff more in order, and help head off any looming disasters I would've been fully oblivious to.
Context
Questions
Sorry for the long post, I hope breaking it up like this at least helps make it more navigable. Some of this might be very basic stuff and some of it might not really be answerable at all, so sorry for any dumb questions in here, but any guidance or links to relevant resources would be appreciated.
Currently my NAS has been up and running for several days. I have yet to experience any catastrophic issues or data loss, nothing is presently stored on it that's not duplicated elsewhere. What I'm seeking right now is preventative advice, and possible tweaks or optimizations to improve reliability. I've tried digging around and researching on the forums and documentation as much as I can, but I am not a smart woman and a lot of discussions and instructions are pretty impenetrable to me. It's hard to even tell sometimes what things are relevant to my particular situation. So I'm hoping that maybe some of you smart folks out there can help me get my stuff more in order, and help head off any looming disasters I would've been fully oblivious to.
Context
The main reason I decided to set up a NAS was for more reliable data storage and regular backups. Currently my main PC has a 1TB M.2 SSD, and additional storage in the form of a 1TB HDD that has been through 3 different builds of my PC over the past decade, and though it's yet to cause any problems I'm running under the assumption that it's just waiting for the perfect moment to succumb to old age and become dust. Beyond that, I've got a couple USB drives which have always felt kinda flaky to me, fill up way too fast if I want to fit a system image on there, and which I never actually use because it's such a pain to go dig them out of a drawer and plug them in and then spend hours running windows backup only to have it fail for some reason. The inconvenience of it is actively detrimental to my data safety because I never actually want to use the damn things.
So the thought was, have a separate box that's always on and accessible, let windows automatically save backups to it, get some redundancy in there for extra security, and have a solution for up-to-date data backups that I'll actually use. And it means I can also archive old and big and less-used files on there to free up space on my main PC's drives. If I could also figure out how to set it up to beam video files up to the family's smart TV or whatever that'd be a fun bonus, but far from a priority.
I realize this isn't, like, a true genuine 100% backup solution. It'll still be vulnerable to my house catching on fire, or a burglar breaking in, and probably susceptible to any vulnerabilities in/attacks on our local network. But it's not feasible for me to buy extra drives to ship off to cold storage, and I have data I don't particularly want to trust with 3rd-party cloud services. The idea is to significantly improve my data security, which again, is presently "barely anything". It'll at least help protect me in the event one of my main drives fails, or somebody dumps a diet coke into my PC or what have you, and gives me a place to keep my data if I need to reinstall my OS or anything.
(Also yes, I am a Windows user, and I agree, it is a godawful operating system made by a greedy corporation that seems determined to make it worse at every turn, but I am far too stupid for linux and I also like playing video games so I have to make do)
So the thought was, have a separate box that's always on and accessible, let windows automatically save backups to it, get some redundancy in there for extra security, and have a solution for up-to-date data backups that I'll actually use. And it means I can also archive old and big and less-used files on there to free up space on my main PC's drives. If I could also figure out how to set it up to beam video files up to the family's smart TV or whatever that'd be a fun bonus, but far from a priority.
I realize this isn't, like, a true genuine 100% backup solution. It'll still be vulnerable to my house catching on fire, or a burglar breaking in, and probably susceptible to any vulnerabilities in/attacks on our local network. But it's not feasible for me to buy extra drives to ship off to cold storage, and I have data I don't particularly want to trust with 3rd-party cloud services. The idea is to significantly improve my data security, which again, is presently "barely anything". It'll at least help protect me in the event one of my main drives fails, or somebody dumps a diet coke into my PC or what have you, and gives me a place to keep my data if I need to reinstall my OS or anything.
(Also yes, I am a Windows user, and I agree, it is a godawful operating system made by a greedy corporation that seems determined to make it worse at every turn, but I am far too stupid for linux and I also like playing video games so I have to make do)
*MB: ASRock Z75 Pro3
*CPU: i5-2500K
*RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1866
†PSU: EVGA 500 BR
‡NIC: Intel Gigabit CT (EXPI9301CT)
Boot Drive: Samsung 870 EVO, 250GB SATA SSD
Storage Drives: 2x Seagate BarraCuda, 8TB 5400 RPM HDD (Mirrored config)
*Parts re-used from a previous build of my mid-low budget gaming PC, which were in good working condition for several years before being retired.
Some places in the current TrueNAS documentation claim that 8GB RAM is the minimum required, while other places allege 16GB is needed. if 16 is truly required, it'd be nice if the documentation were updated to make that consistent. I've yet to run into any problems from the amount of RAM, but when transferring a lot of files the dashboard sometimes shows the ZFS cache pushing up uncomfortably close to the limit - there's .3GiB free right now.
The CPU has been more than sufficient, no thread ever pushing above the mid-20%s at their highest peaks, but unfortunately neither the CPU nor motherboard support ECC RAM.
†I would have liked something with a lower wattage and better efficiency + more reliability features, but that market intersection does not seem to exist in the computer part spaces I'm aware of, eg. Newegg, Amazon. Lower wattage seems to correlate with lower quality, no-name brands, etc, and you don't really start getting "premium" features until you look into extremely expensive units with wattages that would be absurdly overkill for a system like this. Maybe there's a market out there for server-specific low-power high-quality PSUs that I just haven't been able to find
‡Bought used, verified genuine, has the Intel logo and the holographic Yottamark sticker, code checked out correctly
*CPU: i5-2500K
*RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1866
†PSU: EVGA 500 BR
‡NIC: Intel Gigabit CT (EXPI9301CT)
Boot Drive: Samsung 870 EVO, 250GB SATA SSD
Storage Drives: 2x Seagate BarraCuda, 8TB 5400 RPM HDD (Mirrored config)
*Parts re-used from a previous build of my mid-low budget gaming PC, which were in good working condition for several years before being retired.
Some places in the current TrueNAS documentation claim that 8GB RAM is the minimum required, while other places allege 16GB is needed. if 16 is truly required, it'd be nice if the documentation were updated to make that consistent. I've yet to run into any problems from the amount of RAM, but when transferring a lot of files the dashboard sometimes shows the ZFS cache pushing up uncomfortably close to the limit - there's .3GiB free right now.
The CPU has been more than sufficient, no thread ever pushing above the mid-20%s at their highest peaks, but unfortunately neither the CPU nor motherboard support ECC RAM.
†I would have liked something with a lower wattage and better efficiency + more reliability features, but that market intersection does not seem to exist in the computer part spaces I'm aware of, eg. Newegg, Amazon. Lower wattage seems to correlate with lower quality, no-name brands, etc, and you don't really start getting "premium" features until you look into extremely expensive units with wattages that would be absurdly overkill for a system like this. Maybe there's a market out there for server-specific low-power high-quality PSUs that I just haven't been able to find
‡Bought used, verified genuine, has the Intel logo and the holographic Yottamark sticker, code checked out correctly
Questions
This would've been a good question to ask much sooner in the process, but i didn't (and still don't really) know what other options are even available when it comes to NAS OSes. In my later research I came across this post, a lot of the details of which fly right over my head, but it gives the impression that ZFS is such a fragile finicky system that if any single part of your entire machine has an error, all your data will be irretrievably lost forever even if the actual drives are fully intact, and there's no way to recover any of it. Which doesn't sound great! But also the post is a decade old, and I don't know how much of it still holds true.
Considering that the main thing I want out of my NAS is to be the most reliable place in my home to store data, including data that I may not keep other duplicates of elsewhere, is a ZFS-based system the best option for me? Is one failed RAM stick or other component going to sabotage all my data? If the hardware or OS fail in some way but the drives are still fine, will it be possible for me to retrieve the data from them after replacing faulty components/restoring my TrueNAS config file/etc?
If ZFS isn't suitable for my use case, is there a better option out there I should consider instead?
Considering that the main thing I want out of my NAS is to be the most reliable place in my home to store data, including data that I may not keep other duplicates of elsewhere, is a ZFS-based system the best option for me? Is one failed RAM stick or other component going to sabotage all my data? If the hardware or OS fail in some way but the drives are still fine, will it be possible for me to retrieve the data from them after replacing faulty components/restoring my TrueNAS config file/etc?
If ZFS isn't suitable for my use case, is there a better option out there I should consider instead?
My main concern is the lack of ECC RAM, but the recycled components are also pretty old and well-used, though they were still in full working order when they were last taken out of service. The MB did show some finickiness when I was putting the NAS together that I don't really love, where it refused to power on unless the feng shui of the cables and tightness of the mounting screws was just right, but once it's actually all in place and powered on it hasn't shown any issues.
Considering these factors, how much of a gamble do you suppose I'd be taking by storing any data exclusively on the NAS, even just for the next 3-6 months while I save up for an upgrade? Is it a safer bet than a decade-old HDD or some flimsy USB drives? I would still like to get some use out of it during the interim instead of having a very expensive brick tucked under a table for months, but it's hard to evaluate just how risky it would be to incorporate it fully into my data management in its current state. I don't expect anyone else to be able to know exactly either, but maybe someone smarter can give a more educated guess at least.
Considering these factors, how much of a gamble do you suppose I'd be taking by storing any data exclusively on the NAS, even just for the next 3-6 months while I save up for an upgrade? Is it a safer bet than a decade-old HDD or some flimsy USB drives? I would still like to get some use out of it during the interim instead of having a very expensive brick tucked under a table for months, but it's hard to evaluate just how risky it would be to incorporate it fully into my data management in its current state. I don't expect anyone else to be able to know exactly either, but maybe someone smarter can give a more educated guess at least.
I would like to invest into a new board, CPU, and ECC RAM once it's financially feasible for me, but part of the problem is that I simply don't know where to look or what to look for. I only really know any semblance of anything about the gaming PC component world, where the things that are prioritized are far different from the needs of a server. I don't know what specific boards or CPUs I should look into, I don't know what will be sufficient and what will be total overkill for a box that's meant to serve as a glorified hard drive with no need for video transcoding or anything.
Any specific part recommendations, for components that are ECC RAM compatible and suitable for this job, would be appreciated, and even moreso if you can provide links. I'm not even sure if these sorts of server components are something you can buy new in box on consumer sites like newegg or if you just have to trawl ebay hoping the right used part pops up.
Also, I do want as much reliability as I can easily get, but... again, my budget is very finite. I do expect to have to make some compromises. So, as much as possible, I'd like to look into the most affordable components that can still do a satisfactory job.
Any specific part recommendations, for components that are ECC RAM compatible and suitable for this job, would be appreciated, and even moreso if you can provide links. I'm not even sure if these sorts of server components are something you can buy new in box on consumer sites like newegg or if you just have to trawl ebay hoping the right used part pops up.
Also, I do want as much reliability as I can easily get, but... again, my budget is very finite. I do expect to have to make some compromises. So, as much as possible, I'd like to look into the most affordable components that can still do a satisfactory job.
I am like, aware that burn-in is a thing people do to check reliability before putting parts fully into use, but I don't really know... how to execute that for something like a TrueNAS system. And when I get new components for my system I would like to be able to check them thoroughly before trusting my data to them, especially the RAM since it seems so pivotal. Is there like, a plug-in or utility I can run on the TrueNAS box to just tell it to put the RAM and CPU on blast for some hours or days or weeks to make sure nothing's gonna fail under the stress? Do I just have to run it normally but not trust it exclusively with any data until it's proven itself after a few months? What do proper burn-in procedures look like for a home user?
This one might be too vague to answer helpfully, but it seems like with this kind of thing there's often some kind of "oh yeah if you don't change this one value everything just works way worse" quirk that you just have to learn through hearsay.
Currently I've done pretty much just the absolute barebones configuration to get my NAS up and running. Set up a pool, a couple datasets, a user account, shares so I could access files from Windows, messed with network interfaces until I finally got the NIC to work. The only other thing I've really done is set up automatic tasks for SMART tests and scrubs, and saved a backup of the config file for safety's sake. Both the root account and my personal account have strong random passwords.
Are there any other important configuration steps I ought to take? Am I unwittingly leaving any huge security gaps open or leaving free performance on the table somewhere?
Currently I've done pretty much just the absolute barebones configuration to get my NAS up and running. Set up a pool, a couple datasets, a user account, shares so I could access files from Windows, messed with network interfaces until I finally got the NIC to work. The only other thing I've really done is set up automatic tasks for SMART tests and scrubs, and saved a backup of the config file for safety's sake. Both the root account and my personal account have strong random passwords.
Are there any other important configuration steps I ought to take? Am I unwittingly leaving any huge security gaps open or leaving free performance on the table somewhere?
This one kind of falls outside the scope of the rest of the post and might not even be a problem, but I figured I'd toss it in here too. I had a monitor hooked up to the NAS today to troubleshoot after installing the NIC, and noticed that while transferring a lot of files it throws up somewhat frequent log messages that look like:
Googling the "No route to host" message, it seems to show up when people are having connectivity issues of some sort, but for me everything's still been working completely fine when it pops up, it doesn't interrupt file transfers or anything. It seems benign in this case so maybe there's no cause for concern, but is there anything that it might be harming or that I ought to look into to keep the message from continuing to pop up?
Code:
Feb 17 22:11:16 truenas 1 2023-02-17T22:11:48.634427-07:00 truenas.local dhclient 861 - - send_packet: No route to host
Googling the "No route to host" message, it seems to show up when people are having connectivity issues of some sort, but for me everything's still been working completely fine when it pops up, it doesn't interrupt file transfers or anything. It seems benign in this case so maybe there's no cause for concern, but is there anything that it might be harming or that I ought to look into to keep the message from continuing to pop up?
Sorry for the long post, I hope breaking it up like this at least helps make it more navigable. Some of this might be very basic stuff and some of it might not really be answerable at all, so sorry for any dumb questions in here, but any guidance or links to relevant resources would be appreciated.
