Hi all!
Let me first introduce myself a tiny bit before i fire my plans and questions away
.
My name is Matt, and I'm Belgian. A bit of a petrolhead, spacenerd, and IT "enthousiast"..
So i love very fast things!
Some time ago i had a slight cardiac arrest, when i was messing around with my gaming PC setting up RAID Nvme's, when it decided that all my connected HDD's needed changes in their GPT/FS structure too... Resulting in weird things happening when accessing the data...
I managed to retrieve all of my data back (using DMDE) without any issues, so that cardiac arrest was not permanent XD..
Now i know that it's not that smart to fiddle with the controllers, especially when they have drives attached with important data.. Silly me..
I have been following FreeBSD/Freenas way back, some 6-7 years ago i think, and finally decided to build a NAS where i put my data on, away from my experiments..
So, whenever everything arrives from my orders, i will be jumping in the world of ZFS and Trunas Core (or Scale?).
The List:
The plan/use:
Main goal: create a safer and redundant storage pool, with critical files synced to an external drive and cloud. (mostly pictures/docs.. ), all the rest of the data would be painfull to lose, but certainly not critical.
In that way the critical data is on site on a redundant array, could be physically moved taking the external drive (house on fire), and is backupped to the cloud (house on fire too fast/all drives lost ).
The plan is to put my data, which is currently on the 3x 8TB drives as seperate volumes (windows 11), centralized on the NAS i'll be building.
For now, that's my main goal, but i would like to sync my google services, maybe plex, run the occasional test VM.
Then i will eject those three drives from my desktop to my NAS, and do something with it, not sure what exaclty (maybe a backup for critical data).
So, concerning "the list", i know it's probably overkill, but i rather buy something that's more then sufficient, rather then be bottlenecked..
The questions:
So starting with the mobo:
-> Do i need to flash the internal SATA controller, like recommended for those M1015's IT mode?
Not sure if Truenas will be able to connect to the drives in a direct way. (SATA only board, so probaly not possible too?)
This, off course, in the event i hook up disks to the mobo. I presume it's recommended/preferred to use the HBA's instead of the onboard SATA's?
-> For now i've gone with 2x 16GB of ECC RAM, i hope that's sufficient to start, but can be expanded to 128GB.
VDEV's:
-> 5x 16TB Exos drives
-> 3x 8TB (mix of RED and 2 White's)
-> 2x 500GB Samsung Evo's (OS installation)
So for the 16TB drives, would you guy's opt for RAIDZ1 + hot spare (3 disks + parity disk + hot spare), or a RAIDZ2 (3 Disks + 2 parity disks).
I cannot decide..
I figure that the first is "more secure" in the event that i lose a drive as with the hot spare it would resilver instantly? In the second case i'd have to get spare drives and then rebuild the data. (but imagine this will go faster as it has 2 parity drives to resilver?)
I'd like to hear your recommendations pro's/cons on this.
As for the 8TB drives, a raid 5 or 1:1:1 mirror, not quite sure yet.
(Depending on your thoughts about the onboard SATA's, i will connect all the HDD's through 1x M1015, and then the OS SSD's to the 2nd M1015 or the Mobo directly.)
To Scale or not to Scale?
I understand that Scale is still experimental, but if i understand correctly, is more suited for running VM's.
Also, in the event the OS bricks, it should be a piece of cake retrieving back the VDEV/config of the drives as it is stored on the drives itself right?
If my assumptions are correct, i think i will go for Scale, as my data is very likely not to be at risk. (not 100% fullproof, i know, but what is?)
The build/install checklist:
- Test the Memory (couple of full passes)
- Change the FW on those M1015's and verify it is set to IT mode
- Install OS on 1 drive + basic OS config
- Mount the 16TB drives and run full disk test
- Create The VDEV 'OS' (Mirror OS to second SSD drive)
- Create The VDEV '16TB disks' (RAIDZ1 or 2?)
- copy data to 16TB VDEV
- Remove 3x 8TB from my DT and configure them in Truenas.
This is off course very 'raw' and subject to change.
Future expansion:
I understand it is not that straightforward to expand the VDEV's by simply putting in extra drives, but that it will require a full HDD swap (new VDEV) to accomodate bigger storage capacity. By the time i will use all the space from the 16TB array, there will be larger drives on the market so i can 'juggle' between the 3 disks array and then the 5 disks array, and so on... (or get a larger case/rack to house it all)
With my current components i can house 16 drives through the 2 M1015's, and depending on the mobo controllers, maybe 15 more.
If CPU is not adequate enough -> E-2288G to double the core & thread count, and can expand to 128GB of ECC when needed.
This mobo comes with 2x 10GBe NIC's (Intel® X550-AT2) (and 2x GBe by Intel® i210), so 10 gig is covered. My house still needs an upgrade to these speeds, but in due time when needed. I think that the only route where 10GBe is beneficial or needed, is from my desktop straight to the NAS.
As i will be a 'first timer' to install, explore and configurate Truenas for real (ran freenas in VM's to play around), i hope the ease of Freenas and off course this vast community will come to the rescue when needed.
I will try and update this thread as i progress on the build.
Any advice, comments, tips, suggestions, ... are very welcome, and last but not least, a very happy NE to all of you!
Many thanks,
Greetz,
Matt
Let me first introduce myself a tiny bit before i fire my plans and questions away
.My name is Matt, and I'm Belgian. A bit of a petrolhead, spacenerd, and IT "enthousiast"..
So i love very fast things!
Some time ago i had a slight cardiac arrest, when i was messing around with my gaming PC setting up RAID Nvme's, when it decided that all my connected HDD's needed changes in their GPT/FS structure too... Resulting in weird things happening when accessing the data...
I managed to retrieve all of my data back (using DMDE) without any issues, so that cardiac arrest was not permanent XD..
Now i know that it's not that smart to fiddle with the controllers, especially when they have drives attached with important data.. Silly me..
I have been following FreeBSD/Freenas way back, some 6-7 years ago i think, and finally decided to build a NAS where i put my data on, away from my experiments..
So, whenever everything arrives from my orders, i will be jumping in the world of ZFS and Trunas Core (or Scale?).
The List:
| What | Description | PN | QTY |
| HDD | Seagate HDD 3.5 EXOS X16 16TB | ST16000NM001G | 5 |
| HDD | WD Red 8TB EFZX | 1 | |
| HDD | WD White label 8TB EMAZ | 2 | |
| Mobo | Asrock E3C246D4U2-2L2T Intel C246 LGA 1151 | E3C246D4U2-2L2T | 1 |
| RAM | Kingston Technology KSM26ES8/16ME 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz ECC | KSM26ES8/16ME | 2 |
| OS HDD | Samsung evo 870 500GB | MZ-77E500B/EU | 2 |
| HBA | IBM M1015 | IBM M1015 | 2 |
| Case | Fractal Design Node 804 | 1 | |
| PSU | Seasonic PRIME GX-650 | 1 | |
| HDD CBL | DeLOCK Mini SAS SFF-8087 to 4x SATA 7 pin | 2 | |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E-2234 processor | CM8068404174806 | 1 |
The plan/use:
Main goal: create a safer and redundant storage pool, with critical files synced to an external drive and cloud. (mostly pictures/docs.. ), all the rest of the data would be painfull to lose, but certainly not critical.
In that way the critical data is on site on a redundant array, could be physically moved taking the external drive (house on fire
), and is backupped to the cloud (house on fire too fast/all drives lost ).The plan is to put my data, which is currently on the 3x 8TB drives as seperate volumes (windows 11), centralized on the NAS i'll be building.
For now, that's my main goal, but i would like to sync my google services, maybe plex, run the occasional test VM.
Then i will eject those three drives from my desktop to my NAS, and do something with it, not sure what exaclty (maybe a backup for critical data).
So, concerning "the list", i know it's probably overkill, but i rather buy something that's more then sufficient, rather then be bottlenecked..
The questions:
So starting with the mobo:
-> Do i need to flash the internal SATA controller, like recommended for those M1015's IT mode?
Not sure if Truenas will be able to connect to the drives in a direct way. (SATA only board, so probaly not possible too?)
This, off course, in the event i hook up disks to the mobo. I presume it's recommended/preferred to use the HBA's instead of the onboard SATA's?
-> For now i've gone with 2x 16GB of ECC RAM, i hope that's sufficient to start, but can be expanded to 128GB.
VDEV's:
-> 5x 16TB Exos drives
-> 3x 8TB (mix of RED and 2 White's)
-> 2x 500GB Samsung Evo's (OS installation)
So for the 16TB drives, would you guy's opt for RAIDZ1 + hot spare (3 disks + parity disk + hot spare), or a RAIDZ2 (3 Disks + 2 parity disks).
I cannot decide..
I figure that the first is "more secure" in the event that i lose a drive as with the hot spare it would resilver instantly? In the second case i'd have to get spare drives and then rebuild the data. (but imagine this will go faster as it has 2 parity drives to resilver?)
I'd like to hear your recommendations pro's/cons on this.
As for the 8TB drives, a raid 5 or 1:1:1 mirror, not quite sure yet.
(Depending on your thoughts about the onboard SATA's, i will connect all the HDD's through 1x M1015, and then the OS SSD's to the 2nd M1015 or the Mobo directly.)
To Scale or not to Scale?
I understand that Scale is still experimental, but if i understand correctly, is more suited for running VM's.
Also, in the event the OS bricks, it should be a piece of cake retrieving back the VDEV/config of the drives as it is stored on the drives itself right?
If my assumptions are correct, i think i will go for Scale, as my data is very likely not to be at risk. (not 100% fullproof, i know, but what is?)
The build/install checklist:
- Test the Memory (couple of full passes)
- Change the FW on those M1015's and verify it is set to IT mode
- Install OS on 1 drive + basic OS config
- Mount the 16TB drives and run full disk test
- Create The VDEV 'OS' (Mirror OS to second SSD drive)
- Create The VDEV '16TB disks' (RAIDZ1 or 2?)
- copy data to 16TB VDEV
- Remove 3x 8TB from my DT and configure them in Truenas.
This is off course very 'raw' and subject to change.
Future expansion:
I understand it is not that straightforward to expand the VDEV's by simply putting in extra drives, but that it will require a full HDD swap (new VDEV) to accomodate bigger storage capacity. By the time i will use all the space from the 16TB array, there will be larger drives on the market so i can 'juggle' between the 3 disks array and then the 5 disks array, and so on... (or get a larger case/rack to house it all)
With my current components i can house 16 drives through the 2 M1015's, and depending on the mobo controllers, maybe 15 more.
If CPU is not adequate enough -> E-2288G to double the core & thread count, and can expand to 128GB of ECC when needed.
This mobo comes with 2x 10GBe NIC's (Intel® X550-AT2) (and 2x GBe by Intel® i210), so 10 gig is covered. My house still needs an upgrade to these speeds, but in due time when needed. I think that the only route where 10GBe is beneficial or needed, is from my desktop straight to the NAS.
As i will be a 'first timer' to install, explore and configurate Truenas for real (ran freenas in VM's to play around), i hope the ease of Freenas and off course this vast community will come to the rescue when needed
.I will try and update this thread as i progress on the build.
Any advice, comments, tips, suggestions, ... are very welcome, and last but not least, a very happy NE to all of you!
Many thanks,
Greetz,
Matt
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