Looking to your expert guidance to build my first TrueNAS ... NAS!

[zachlovescoffee]

Hello team,

I recently fallen down the rabbit hole of data hoarding and it started off with migrating 20 years of photos from an old 1TB drive into iCloud. I thought, hmm I know there's more and voila, I found a ton of extra stuff and use-cases to justify spending money. So I purchased a 2-bay Synology NAS with 10TB Seasgate EXOS in SHR1 and a 10TB external backup. Well, one month later and I'm almost 30% of the way filled and I'm predicting that within 3 months ill be over 75%.

My current use case is that I am streaming Plex content and sharing it with my family (mostly parents with limited budgets). I'm regularly acquiring new content, usually 1080-2160/4k. I'm also a huge music fan so I have a massive collection of FLAC/AAC and purchase mostly new albums directly from the artists in FLAC. In addition to this, I have an ever growing collection of photos and videos and as the kids get older and acquire phones, I expect that content to grow massively as well. I also seed a lot of Linux ISOs.

I have a symmetrical 500Mb up/down fiber connection, which is feeding a 1Gbit router two unmanaged switches (2x1Gbit) and 5 backhauled wireless mesh nodes. The majority of the 'mission critical' machines are of course wired in (NAS, Macs and PCs). I recently purchased an Intel NUC11TNHi5 that I was thinking I would use to be my new 'server' and replace the Synology NAS, but I'm having a hard time determining which way to go. Using the NUC would surely be a perfect solution for the Plex streaming and content serving, but now I don't know how to manage the data. I don't want to buy a Synology 5+ bay because it feels like I'd have a wasted computer either with the Synology or the NUC. And, the Synology NAS' CPU would likely slow down anything coming across the LAN through the NUC out to parents/family.

This is where I need your help :) If I don't go down the TrueNAS dedicated hardware route, what are some other strategies for using the NUC, if any to handle my use cases?

If I do go down the TrueNAS route, can you please suggest some specific hardware for my stated use cases?

I would likely get an 8-10 bay Fractal case to house all of the drives. I'd like something that is quiet enough but doesn't have to be super quiet because I have a telco closet in the basement where everything is networked. I would like to try to conserve energy to the extent possible in this case. I definitely want to stick with Intel LAN and Intel iGPU for QuickSync/hardware Transcoding.

 

[zachlovescoffee]

The NUC is currently running Ubuntu 23.04 and I'm familiar enough in a *nix environment to be dangerous. I SSH into the NUC to administer it and I've been testing running Plex and other applications, GlueTun, Transmission *arr, via Docker containers. So those would also be part of the aforementioned use-cases. Also, I rudely forgot to say thank you for your time and consideration of my request for assistance. THANK YOU! :)

 

[Davvo]

Welcome! First of all, look at the following resource:

Resources List including Detailed Hardware and System Build Notes (plus new user advice / help)

TrueNAS is not as simple as videos make it look, though it is fairly easy to get a system running if you read the documentation and don't color outside the lines. If you want to save yourself lots of money and loads of time, the top of the...

www.truenas.com

Start with ZFS Introduction, Universal Serial Bus of Doom, Host Bus Adapter (HBA) vs RAID Controllers and the Hardware Guide, which are the most relevant to your situation.

I recently purchased an Intel NUC11TNHi5 that I was thinking I would use to be my new 'server' and replace the Synology NAS, but I'm having a hard time determining which way to go. Using the NUC would surely be a perfect solution for the Plex streaming and content serving, but now I don't know how to manage the data. If I don't go down the TrueNAS dedicated hardware route, what are some other strategies for using the NUC, if any to handle my use cases?

Well, point is you can't attach your hard drives to that... box, which means I don't see a way for it to be used with TN without another system.
Fractal cases are great, I would choose either the Define 7 XL or the Meshify 2 XL (the first is more closed = less noise, higher temps), both can handle the number of drives you want (but you will likely need to buy additional cages).

If you plan on running VMs or Jails (and you want to for PLEX) you will want at least a pair of SATA SSD in a two-way mirror.

Are you using Plex Pass for hardware transcoding?

 

[zachlovescoffee]

Are you using Plex Pass for hardware transcoding?

Yep! I purchased a LifeTime Pass for that reason and many more. Thank you!

 

[Davvo]

Yep! I purchased a LifeTime Pass for that reason and many more. Thank you!

Then you will have to choose either a iGPU with hardware acceleration or a dedicated GPU with that (iirc from RTX 3000 series and beyond).

 

[zachlovescoffee]

Then you will have to choose either a iGPU with hardware acceleration or a dedicated GPU with that (iirc from RTX 3000 series and beyond).

Oh boy! I read the introductory message and it seems my principal use case is contraindicated by TrueNAS. I.e., Plex it is advised to not use TrueNAS :(

 

[Davvo]

Oh boy! I read the introductory message and it seems my principal use case is contraindicated by TrueNAS. I.e., Plex it is advised to not use TrueNAS :(

Well, that introduction is a bit harsher than it should. Plenty of people use it, don't be discouraged.

 

[zachlovescoffee]

Well, perhaps I could just build a small PC and run Ubuntu server and just do mdadm and all of the docker stuff easier?

 

[danb35]

Plex works very well on TrueNAS; I've been using it there for 8+ years. The point of the resource linked up-thread is that it does take some study to set up a good system, and probably more work that the Youtube video of "turn your old castoff PC into a file server and run Plex on it" would indicate.

 

[zachlovescoffee]

Plex works very well on TrueNAS; I've been using it there for 8+ years. The point of the resource linked up-thread is that it does take some study to set up a good system, and probably more work that the Youtube video of "turn your old castoff PC into a file server and run Plex on it" would indicate.

Is it still true that you cannot expand a ZFS pool once it’s created? And also, if a vdev in a ZFS pool does that the whole pool dies? That seems rather…catastrophic :)

 

[Davvo]

Is it still true that you cannot expand a ZFS pool once it’s created? And also, if a vdev in a ZFS pool does that the whole pool dies? That seems rather…catastrophic :)

Properly designed pools very rarely fail unless you abandon them.

 

[danb35]

Is it still true that you cannot expand a ZFS pool once it’s created?

It has never been the case that you cannot expand a ZFS pool once it's created. It has always been the case that you cannot expand a vdev once it's created (other than adding mirror disks).

if a vdev in a ZFS pool does that the whole pool dies?

Yes, that is true. It's a natural consequence of data being striped across vdevs--which is really the only sensible way to have multiple vdevs in a pool.

 

[zachlovescoffee]

@danb35 or @Davvo What do you think?

I’m thinking perhaps I need to just build a solid NAS, nothing revolutionary but has some upgradeability in the future and let my NUC do all of the Plexing, Transmission, Gluetun, *arr work.

If I have the NAS just be a NAS and serve files over the LAN, is a 1Gb link unlikely to get saturated during streaming? If I have the NUC regularly writing (5-25 concurrent downloads) and seeding (<100 seeds currently) to/from the NAS I’m guessing this is tolerable for TrueNAS and 1Gb link? Or should I be looking for a 2.5Gb to match up to the NUC? The rest of my machines are all 1Gb.

Most of the streaming is on LAN but some of it will be remote. I have a 500Mb symmetrical fiber line.