Is ZFS the droid i'm looking for?

SuperDerpBro

Cadet
Joined
Apr 9, 2022
Messages
2
Hello. :)

So, I've been using unraid for about 6 years. Started reading about ZFS a few days ago and want to switch. I've become paranoid about some of my data and I'm sick of checksumming everything manually. From what I'm reading ZFS does this for me?

I plan on buying some "new" hardware for a low cost build. Will this combo work?

For $200/250 ish (CAD) I can get ..

Intel Xeon E3-1231v3 SR1R5 or E3-1270v3 SR151
2x 8GB Samsung DDR3L-1600 ECC Unbuffered 1.35V M391B1G73EB0-YK0Q (not 100% sure if compatible)
Supermicro X10SLL-F
I was planning of retiring my drives and buying new ones this month. They have been spinning for 6 years now.

It will mostly be used for storage, very mild PLEX (Jellyfin?) usage and Sonarr. So I don't need anything crazy.

I very rarely buy a used motherboard but I feel like Supermicro are pretty reliable? Do Supermicro boards support normal consumer CPU coolers?

Thanks :)
 

Arwen

MVP
Joined
May 17, 2014
Messages
3,600
Welcome.

TrueNAS & ZFS can be a bit of a learning curve. I'd suggest starting with a simple VM and fake, small virtual disks to test & play with TrueNAS. I use Virtual Box for testing TrueNAS SCALE.

I don't have any comment on the hardware, perhaps someone else will. However, we do have sticky threads in various forums for hardware and suggested configurations. Further, we also have a Resources section, (see top line of forum web page), which has tons of specific topic articles. (Like backing up to locally attached, but removable disk.)

Yes, ZFS should both detect and correct any file errors that may occur. Simply setup regular ZFS pool scrubs, like twice a month. And of course schedule regular SMART tests, (which don't help with data integrity directly, but do help detect failing disks).

Well, I actually do have one tiny hardware suggestion. If possible, keep a free SATA disk slot available for either disk replacements. Or, locally attached disk(s) for backups.
 
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