Is my plan for a TrueNas Scale system achievable?

[ChrisHolzer]

Hi everyone!

I'm considering to use TrueNas for a new NAS build but I am not sure if my plan is a good one or not.

Goal:

• Store all our movies and pictures
• Host Plex Server with hardware encoding (GTX 1650 super)
• Host nextcloud server
  • LAN clients (windows) must be able to directly access their nextcloud data stored on the NAS via cifs/smb
    (it must not be required to run the nextcloud client on each windows PC and store a copy of all files locally on the client which are already present in the LAN on the NAS)

Plan:

• 2x (old) 60GB Intel SSDs - boot-pool
• 4x 12Tb Seagate Ironwolf in RaidZ1: stores movies and pictures
  (I want these to spin down when not in use. typically they will not be accessed for more than 3h per day in the evening - 5 hours per day on weekends, so no need to have them spinning 24/7 producing heat and noise)
• 3x Samsung 870 EVO 2 TB in Raidz1: contains Plex server App including temporary transcode files, nextcloud server app including the data users sync to it.
  
  Reasoning:
  watching movies and viewing pictures happens very rarely - so I don't want to have the HDDs spinning 24/7 which causes noise and heat (system is in the living space).
  We use Plex's DVR feature in combination with an HDhomerun, so having plex on the SSD pool with the temp. transcoding files seems reasonable I guess?
  Nextcloud is used quite a lot but we don't have that much stored on it - so to also keep the HDDs spun down I want that on the SSD pool.

Questions:

1. Does my plan make sense?
2. Seems like the boot-pool can't be used for anything else but the TrueNas OS. Considering that new SSD's are quite large, do you guys really use i.e. 2x 250GB SSDs just for TrueNAS? That seems.... inefficient. I guess I am missing something here - but a Thumb Drive is strongly discuraged.
3. Should hardware encoding work with the Plex App? I could not test that yet as my 1650 Super is currently in use in my productive system.
4. I could not find any way to have my windows clients directly access the data stored on the nextcloud server app.
   We really don't want to run the nextcloud app on each windows PC and then have a local copy of the data that is already available on our LAN on our NAS.
   Is that even possible?

Thanks in advance! :)

 

[NugentS]

Hi,
1. - Yes.
2. - TrueNAS uses the entire disk(s) for its boot pool. You can hack this around by several methods including editing the install script (in Scale, dunno about Core) - but its at your own risk.
3. - In Core, No. In Scale - it should
4. - Nextcloud maintains its own copy of the shared files in a data folder which I guess you could arrange to share out directly. However this would then require nextcloud to recognise that changes have happened and update in realtime. This is I suspect a very bad idea that will cause pain and grief and likley loss of data.

 

[Etorix]

Caveat to 1.: Raidz1 with 12 TB drives is NOT very secure. Better use raidz2 here if you want to sustain the loss of a drive without going to fetch the backup…

 

[ChrisHolzer]

Hi,
1. - Yes.
2. - TrueNAS uses the entire disk(s) for its boot pool. You can hack this around by several methods including editing the install script (in Scale, dunno about Core) - but its at your own risk.
3. - In Core, No. In Scale - it should
4. - Nextcloud maintains its own copy of the shared files in a data folder which I guess you could arrange to share out directly. However this would then require nextcloud to recognise that changes have happened and update in realtime. This is I suspect a very bad idea that will cause pain and grief and likley loss of data.

Thanks!
2) what do you guys use for the boot-pool? I mean I can totally put old/used 60GB ssds in the system, but if I want to use new hardware then the smallest (quality) drives I can find have 128GB which seems like a total waste.
Considering that the minimum size of SSDs only gets larger in the future, there has to be a more efficient solution for the boot-pool I guess?

4) that confirms what I found when I searched for an answer. this is very unfortunate. :(

 

[ChrisHolzer]

Caveat to 1.: Raidz1 with 12 TB drives is NOT very secure. Better use raidz2 here if you want to sustain the loss of a drive without going to fetch the backup…

Thx, I did take that in consideration, but since all the important data is backed up regularily I'm okay with the risk of only having single drive parity. :)
I will also continue with my old man habbit of not using HDDs from the same batch and stress testing them before I create the pool.

 

[NugentS]

The good news is that small SSD's are cheap (well fairly). The boot SSD's need nothing special and cheap SSD's are just fine here.
You can still buy MSATA / tiny NVMe so you could use a mSATA/NVMe to USB or PCIe adapter and use some really small drives. I boot one NAS off 2*16GB Optane M.10 drives

 

[danb35]

Nextcloud maintains its own copy of the shared files in a data folder which I guess you could arrange to share out directly. However this would then require nextcloud to recognise that changes have happened and update in realtime. This is I suspect a very bad idea that will cause pain and grief and likley loss of data.

Nextcloud does have the capability (through one of its apps) to deal with files on external storage, and I think it has a separate app to act as a SMB client. But I'm not sure (as I've never used this feature) if it supports separate SMB or external directories for each user.

 

[ChrisHolzer]

Nextcloud does have the capability (through one of its apps) to deal with files on external storage, and I think it has a separate app to act as a SMB client. But I'm not sure (as I've never used this feature) if it supports separate SMB or external directories for each user.

problem with the external storage is how netcloud scans that storage.
there is no option to have it scan the folder periodically or constantly for file changes.
in my test I had to access the folder inside the web interface to get Netcloud to scan the external storage an show me the files. :(
I am also not sure if using that external folder as camera sync folder on my phone will work - did not test that after i noticed the issue with scanning of the external storage. :(

 

[danb35]

there is no option to have it scan the folder periodically or constantly for file changes.

Of course there is--through a cron job if nothing else.

 

[mistermanko]

Of course there is--through a cron job if nothing else.

As the official nextcloud doc recommends:

Configuring External Storage (GUI) — Nextcloud latest Administration Manual latest documentation

 

[ChrisHolzer]

Of course there is--through a cron job if nothing else.

thx!
I will test that. :)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Keep in mind that on CORE running Nextcloud in a jail you should not use a network protocol like SMB to add the external storage. You can add the dataset in the jail settings with a mount point inside the jail and use a local path for external storage in Nextcloud.

 

[ChrisHolzer]

I always stress test new HDDs before I put them into a pool (that is when using other NAS solutions - first time considering building a FrueNas system).

However TrueNAS (Scale) does not seem provide such a feature?
At least not in the GUI - all the info I find online uses ssh?

/edit/ also why is every single of my posts "This message is awaiting moderator approval, and is invisible to normal visitors." ???

 

[NugentS]

To stress test a HDD use badblocks in a tmux (or screen for Scale) session. And yes - this is done at the command line. There is no GUI for this

 

[Etorix]

Alternative:

solnet-array-test

Back in the late '90's, I was managing a bunch of large whitebox storage servers. For the largest of these, I had the pleasure of building and deploying a massive storage server, 8 shelves of 9 drives each, Seagate ST173404LW 73GB drives, a...

www.truenas.com

Although commonly used for testing drives, badblocks is not even intended for this, and the lack of standardised or accepted methodology may be a reason why there's no such tool in the GUI.