My first home rack server build

[CheeryFlame]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on the forum and I'm really excited to jump into NAS with nonetheless TrueNAS Core. Here are the specs of my server I'll order this Friday (I'm waiting for the black friday deals). Note that I've already ordered dual E5-2697v4 CPUs as I got them for as cheap as $80 USD a piece. Also worth mentionning I have an asymmetric 1 Gb/s fiber internet connection.

Server: Dell R730DX

Processor: 2x 2.30Ghz E5-2697v4 18-Core - Total of 36x Cores
RAM: 8x 16GB PC4-21300-R (2666Mhz) - Total of 128GB of memory
Power Supply: 2x 1100W Platinum
RAID Controller: HBA330 Pass-Through SAS Non-RAID 12GB/S
Network Daughter Card: 2x 10GB SFP + 2x 1GB RJ-45 - DELL_0C63DV
DRAC: DRAC8 Enterprise

I'll use this server for everything I need in my home and my business.

• Photography and A/V raw files backup for work
• Web hosting for my customers and my own websites
• NAS for personal files accross all my computers
• Pihole Jail for managing my whole network
• Plex Media Server with multiple simultaneous transcodes
• Home automation with Zigbee and other devices managed with Home Assistant
• Jail/VM for applications like (Twitch Bot, etc)
• Realtime Cloud backup to my enterprise Google Drive
• [...] and many more fun projects will add to this list for sure!

Storage: 12x Dell 3.5'' Caddy / Sled
Mid Flex Bay: 4-Bay 3.5'' MidBay

16 maximum 3.5 drives total maximum (I guess a 12 hotswappable HD setup is better in term of heat and air flow as the 4 additionnal drives are in the MidBay behind the fans in the r730dx)

I'm currently unsure about the hard drives I want to buy. I sure want to maximize storage capacity currently having a fulled 24tb since 4 years which is driving me nuts. Although I don't necessarily want huge storage at the cost of reliability. Having said that from my own research I found out that there were merely 4 categories of hard drives; new, used, refurbished and white label. Since I can't afford new SAS drives and that used drives from marketplace aren't a reliable option, I'm left with either in the refurbished drive market or white labelled drives.

So far I decided to go with SAS drives as they're built exactly for where they're heading to; my server. I want to setup a Raid Z3 The best deals I've found are on eBay and those prices are before Make an offer as I've experienced in the past to reduce shipping and cost per drive. Here are the 2 possible scenarios so far, price is in CAD and include delivery and import charges;

1. 16x 10tb SAS 12GB/s 4Kn CMR SED - Refurbished Seagate Helium Enterprise - $2,506.80 (130 TB)
   
2. 12x 14tb SAS 12GB/s 512e CMR - White Label Seagate Exos Enterprise - $2292.67 (126 TB)

Prioritizing factors: SAS, CMR and Price

As you can see going the white label route would be giving me the most return for my money but I'm afraid it may not last in the long term. Although the drives are from a reputable seller serverpartdeals on ebay and they have both a website and phone number. Interestingly they don't sell the white labelled drives on their own website, only on their eBay store. Why? That would be a good question!

Rear Flex Bay: 2-Bay 2.5'' Rear FlexBay

This is another thing I'm unsure about. I have 2x Samsung Pro 256gb SSDs taking dust. I though I could use them as cache disks ZIL/SLOG but reading further on the subject it wouldn't help at all since the cache is done in ram with TrueNAS. From my understanding ZIL/SLOG's main purpose is for data integrity. Further reading made me realize that the Samsung Pro SSDs wouldn't be the ideal candidate as they're unreliable in case of power loss. Although I have a Tripplite SU2200RTX in my rack that keeps my server up even in case of power outage. Would it work?

Otherwise, I could use the SSDs in Raid 1 and have my jails, like Plex Media Server so scrolling into my libraries would be lightning fast.

Or I though of maybe using the SSDs to unload data of my SD cards when I'm in a rush and that I need to transfer it all quickly. I wonder if I could add all my raw files to Premiere Pro and edit from the NAS on the SSDs in Raid 1. I guess Raid 0 would be useless as my network bottleneck at 1GB/s, so might as well do a mirror backup.

SATA DOM Drive: 64GB SATA Disk On Module

I plan on using the DOM drive as the boot disk for TrueNAS, this is what makes most sense to me.

Making this post to start a discussion about my setup. If you think I should know something or if you have recommendations regarding what you just read I'm open to hear them. This is a huge project for me and I know it'll be a long journey of tinkering and learning. Thank you for whoever read that!

 

[joeschmuck]

Welcome to the forums!

Well you have an interesting system design. My only concern is all the software you plan to run in Jails/Docker on a FreeBSD (Core) system. You may be much better to consider Scale since the VM capability will be much better. I myself use ESXi and place TrueNAS as a VM on top of that. That is what I like and just letting you know that option exists if you implement it properly. But Scale should work as well even though it's still new, and Scale it the path things are going in my opinion. I like Core for my home system right now but will eventually migrate to Scale when Core is no longer being updated.

Some advice: If you do not need it, do not use Deduplication. I can't imagine you would have lots of duplicate files on your system. And SLOG/ZIL, stay clear of those unless you have a specific need for it. You have lots of RAM so the ZIL is not needed. If you do not have a data center then you likely would not see any improvement by using an SLOG. You can always add either one at a later date if you really wanted to but I doubt you will need to.

The one thing you omitted in your list was an UPS. Ensure you have one with a USB data cable to provide notification of a power failure so your NAS can shut down in an orderly condition. No computer likes to have power suddenly dropped. I'd make sure the UPS could power the system at least 10 minutes with all the stuff you plan to run.

I'm sure someone will have other advice for you.

Best of luck to you.

 

[CheeryFlame]

My only concern is all the software you plan to run in Jails/Docker on a FreeBSD (Core) system. You may be much better to consider Scale since the VM capability will be much better. I myself use ESXi and place TrueNAS as a VM on top of that. That is what I like and just letting you know that option exists if you implement it properly. But Scale should work as well even though it's still new, and Scale it the path things are going in my opinion. I like Core for my home system right now but will eventually migrate to Scale when Core is no longer being updated.

I decided to go with Core for the same reason I decided to go with TrueNAS instead of Unraid which looked to me (this is my personal opinion) as something unstable, not ready for production and too complicated. FreeNAS really seems polished, comprehensive and stable from my point of view. I prefer to have a quiet mind over features. The only thing I'm afraid now is when you say that Core may be unsupported in few years. I wonder how I'll be able to port my pools with 140tb of data hehe!

Some advice: If you do not need it, do not use Deduplication. I can't imagine you would have lots of duplicate files on your system.

I guess I only have the CPU and RAM for deduplication and honestly I though it was only possible with SSDs, at least efficiently. It would have been great though for seeding torrents but still being able to put it in Plex oragnanized and renamed to my naming convention. While searching for something else I've read that there's another way to do this without dedup. I'll check that when I'll setup torrents!

And SLOG/ZIL, stay clear of those unless you have a specific need for it. You have lots of RAM so the ZIL is not needed. If you do not have a data center then you likely would not see any improvement by using an SLOG. You can always add either one at a later date if you really wanted to but I doubt you will need to.

Thank you for confirming that, glad to know I can implement it at a later date!

The one thing you omitted in your list was an UPS. Ensure you have one with a USB data cable to provide notification of a power failure so your NAS can shut down in an orderly condition. No computer likes to have power suddenly dropped. I'd make sure the UPS could power the system at least 10 minutes with all the stuff you plan to run.

Since I already have my UPS in my rack I omitted to talk about it! I'm running a Tripp Lite SU2200RTXLCD2U and I plan on buying a second one for redundancy and because I run the server and 2 computers in the rack with many other peripherals. I also live far away in the woods and the electricity is unreliable. Once I have additional budget I already planned everything but I'll buy a backup generator that detects power outage and automatically starts the generator and put my house in safe mode. The complete setup is around 8000$ CAD so it's not gonna be for this year.

Thank you for your reply, it was really informative and I'm glad to be part of the forums instead of just reading it for the past month!

 

[jgreco]

The only thing I'm afraid now is when you say that Core may be unsupported in few years. I wonder how I'll be able to port my pools with 140tb of data hehe!

ZFS pools are generally transferable from one system to another. CORE is unlikely to be going away anytime soon, as the TrueNAS Enterprise product remains based on CORE, and there's a huge investment in the quality of the FreeBSD implementation that is simply lacking on Linux, especially when considering issues like Linux memory management for ARC. Linux always comes off looking like some off-road Jeep that someone hacked together, while FreeBSD is built like a Mack truck. But if ever the day comes when you need to switch to SCALE, you should be able to import your pools just fine, or even switch to another ZFS-based OS as long as it is based on ZoL.

 

[joeschmuck]

I apologize if I made it sound like Core was in the edge of going away. As @jgreco said, it's still here for a while but time flies fast when you look back on it. I was thinking that Scale may be a better option to mitigate some pains later on since you want to run quite a few VM's. And yes, I prefer Core too but then again I don't have any VM's running and have one jail that is easily recreated in Scale. And you pools will migrate to Scale if go down that path.

I also live far away in the woods

Must be nice, I was raised in the woods, a lumber and railroad town. Loved the place but would never move back. Way too much snow during the winter. It was fine as a child but at 60 years of age, well hell, I'm not shoveling snow again if I can help it. But I love the spring, summer, and fall time.

 

[CheeryFlame]

ZFS pools are generally transferable from one system to another. CORE is unlikely to be going away anytime soon, as the TrueNAS Enterprise product remains based on CORE, and there's a huge investment in the quality of the FreeBSD implementation that is simply lacking on Linux, especially when considering issues like Linux memory management for ARC. Linux always comes off looking like some off-road Jeep that someone hacked together, while FreeBSD is built like a Mack truck. But if ever the day comes when you need to switch to SCALE, you should be able to import your pools just fine, or even switch to another ZFS-based OS as long as it is based on ZoL.

That's relieving to know, I really liked the truck comparison!

Must be nice, I was raised in the woods, a lumber and railroad town. Loved the place but would never move back. Way too much snow during the winter. It was fine as a child but at 60 years of age, well hell, I'm not shoveling snow again if I can help it. But I love the spring, summer, and fall time.

It's really great but Id say I'm already tired of snow after just 1 snow storm and it's just starting!