Home NAS server

[Davvo]

I have old HP server with ddr3 (max 8gb ram). What do you think, to install Truenas on it.. make this machine offline.. only turn on when backup needed.. Disks will be in case and just unplug cables to rotate them. On start I buy one 4tb disk, and I have 1 Tb old disk for rotate.

Backup will be done with replication tasks.

What do you think?

Could work.

 

[darkness]

ok so few more questions:

1. Assume that I have one stripped disk as pool in Truenas Core (ZFS) as backup.. It's possible to put this disk to any Linux distro,import pool and access data without Truenas? I'm curious about that to have same behavior as with NTFS/ext4 which I can plug to another computer and have access to data ?

^ Currently I've stored backups on disks with NTFS and it works fine. With ZFS I never played so I have some doubts to change backups to ZFS

2. Are there any reason to take normal HDD or server grade HDD for cold backup? f.e. price diffrence either 4tb baracuda and ironwolf isn't significant..

3. Where do you store config backups (f.e. Truenas, routers etc.) - do you have another disk/cloud for that purpose?

4. How do you test recovery data?

 

[Davvo]

1. As long as it supports ZFS and the pool's feature flags you should be able to access the data in the drives... but Linux is a free-for-all, especially with ZFS, so who knows.
2. Reliability vs Price; you do not want a SMR drive.
3. I use a script that mails me the config weekly: gmail is my backup repository.
4. Depends on the backup method, some commands do have dry runs... otherwise, you have to test with the real deal.

 

[Etorix]

2. "Reliability" is possibly not a concern for a drive which not be resilvered, BUT you do not want to take a SMR drive for a workload which consists of ingesting a big data stream all in one go. Take "normal" HDDs if you want, but normal CMR HDDs.

 

[darkness]

OK so I played today with replications and snapshot in truenas and it's looks really nice. I ordered 4tb ironwolf and second 1tb old disk for that purpose. I will get one SSD usb disk with NTFS for Photos backup.
I installed truenas backup on my proxmox server for testing purpose. It's safe to use truenas as VM for backup purpose and passthrough disk to it (withouth pci-e etc.) in prod env?
If it's really suck, I'll take this old server or buy usb cases for disks.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I installed truenas backup on my proxmox server for testing purpose. It's safe to use truenas as VM for backup purpose and passthrough disk to it (withouth pci-e etc.) in prod env?

No. Anything but PCIe pass through of an entire controller and native access to the disks will potentially result in data loss.

 

[darkness]

Tonight come to my mind crazy idea. I thinking about to buy config which I mention in firsts posts - X570d4u with Ryzen. I get some more knowledge since december and x570 mobos have good onboard passtrough posibilities (IOMMU groups) and 2x 4.0 NVME, 8 sata ports.. AFAIK Ryzen (without iGPU) support ECC.
So idea is to put my main TRUENAS on proxmox and passtrough sata controllers (after reasearch, there are 2 sata controllers, so no need passthrough all ports). "OLD" Truenas will be work as backup, only reduce RAM and put to main server.
Second, less expensive option is to make proxmox on acctual TRUENAS and buy HBA or NVME PCIe adapter or botrh and install proxmox, then use OLD HP server as backup.. But with X11SSL is max RAM Capability 64GB and this is little weakness of this setup.

The goal is reduce electric bill. Already I use two servers which I Think easily can work on one virtualized. With Bare Metal Truenas backup server I would be calm about data safe.

Any reasons to abadond these ideas?

 

[Constantin]

So you’re trying to consolidate two servers into one chassis/motherboard?

Ideally, I’d find a friend who’d like to host the second NAS and backup the data there, not in the same chassis, which only gives you a marginal improvement over a plain pool.

Call it a mutual aid society. The friend gets the benefit of the NAS (ie give him/her/them storage, etc), you set it up to backup to your local machine, your NAS backs up to the remote.

MikroTik wireguard tunnels make it easy, even with DDNS. See the network berg tutorial on YouTube for that.

 

[darkness]

So you’re trying to consolidate two servers into one chassis/motherboard?

Exactly. When consolidate, it'll be work only one machine 24/7 but for that I need better mobo. x570d4u with 2x sata controlers, 2x pci-e 16x and 2x nvme with passthorugh posibilities.. it's looks pretty cool to manipulate.. I hope so not only in theory ;D Ultimatly It can passtrough GPU too, so I can sell one PC and buy more server stuff (it's addictive)

Anyway, I'm hesistant to decided that it's good way but I've tested proxmox env since 3 months so there is a chance it will work ;)

So you’re trying to consolidate two servers into one chassis/motherboard?

Ideally, I’d find a friend who’d like to host the second NAS and backup the data there, not in the same chassis, which only gives you a marginal improvement over a plain pool.

Call it a mutual aid society. The friend gets the benefit of the NAS (ie give him/her/them storage, etc), you set it up to backup to your local machine, your NAS backs up to the remote.

MikroTik wireguard tunnels make it easy, even with DDNS. See the network berg tutorial on YouTube for that.

It's really good one. Remote managment and 'work' with data someone else is more responsible but at the same time it's another oportunity to learn something new (and maybe the first step to a new business ;>)

So assume:
MAIN: Proxmox with x570d4u board -> Truenas VM and other services -> 24/7

ONSITE BACKUP (cold boot):
option 1 (if no offsite): Truenas baremetal with X11SSL-F board or
option 2 (if offsite): HP proviliant ML110 G6

OFFSITE BACKUP (24/7):
Truenas baremetal with X11SSL-F board

Anyway Offsite backup I put to my TODO list.

 

[danb35]

Gotcha, that’s the script I have been using from inside a jail. I misread your message as you having a script that could execute by itself on a given MikroTik switch vs. transferring them from a Linux machine.

Just for the sake of information, it looks like acme.sh now includes its own deployment script to Mikrotik:

deployhooks

A pure Unix shell script implementing ACME client protocol - acmesh-official/acme.sh

github.com