Need help setting up my system

[amuzhaqi]

As the title says, I am unsure about the past settings to follow regarding setting up my system. I am new to this, so that I would appreciate some feedback.

These are the following configurations for my system.

13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13600K
64 GB of DDDR5 RAM
2 x 4TB SSD
2 x 2TB NVME
1 X 16TB HDD

My idea is to use the two SSDs as Data VDEVs, one of the NVMEs as the boot system, and another as a Cache.
The 16TB will be my backup drive. I want to make sure what the best action would be to set up my system. The main usage of this system will be to store all my family pictures and have about a dozen docker applications running in the background.

Should I set up the data pool disks as MIRROR or STRIPE since I will have a backup? What is my best approach to go about this? I want to add that I might add more SSD drives in the future to extend the data size.

 

[Arwen]

Using a 2TB NVMe SSD for booting is like using a mile long train to go down the block for an ice cream. Way over kill. Boot devices need to be perhaps 16GB to 32GBs, depending on how many updates you plan to keep. Sometimes larger is desired, like 64GB to 128GB in case swap is put on it too. (But, then you may want a Mirrored boot.)

Using Striped data vDevs is not recommended. Yes it can be done, (and I do it for my media server's media pool). But, you loose the automatic repair capability of ZFS when a block or entire device goes bad. That would mean manual intervention with your backup each and every time a failure occurs. Yes, some people have to do it for the cost. That's their choice.

You don't mention how the 16TB HDD is connected. If wired up to the SATA port, that's fine. Just that permanently wired USB drives, (except boot devices), tend not to be worth various risks.

Last, a Cache device, (aka L2ARC), are generally not recommended until you have both a reasonable amount of memory, (which you do have, at 64GBs), and an actual need. It is uncertain based on your use case if a Cache device will be useful.

 

[Etorix]

What's the purpose of the system?
Irrespective of the answer, a consumer-grade CPU of the latest generation and non-ECC RAM are not the best hardware choices, and there's no mention of motherboard and NIC yet. (With this generation, you're likely to come across 2.5GbE painbags.) Going for older, DDR4, hardware may be both safer and cheaper.

 

[amuzhaqi]

Using a 2TB NVMe SSD for booting is like using a mile long train to go down the block for an ice cream. Way over kill. Boot devices need to be perhaps 16GB to 32GBs, depending on how many updates you plan to keep. Sometimes larger is desired, like 64GB to 128GB in case swap is put on it too. (But, then you may want a Mirrored boot.)

Using Striped data vDevs is not recommended. Yes it can be done, (and I do it for my media server's media pool). But, you loose the automatic repair capability of ZFS when a block or entire device goes bad. That would mean manual intervention with your backup each and every time a failure occurs. Yes, some people have to do it for the cost. That's their choice.

You don't mention how the 16TB HDD is connected. If wired up to the SATA port, that's fine. Just that permanently wired USB drives, (except boot devices), tend not to be worth various risks.

Last, a Cache device, (aka L2ARC), are generally not recommended until you have both a reasonable amount of memory, (which you do have, at 64GBs), and an actual need. It is uncertain based on your use case if a Cache device will be useful.

Thanks, that makes sense. As I mentioned, I am new to this and just trying to understand what would be the best use of the storage assignment.

Would it then be better to use something else for the boot, I have a 256GB USB 3.2 Gen 2 Flash Drive. Would that work? And then instead utilize the two SSDs as mirrored data for the docker Applications instead of boot and cache? The 16TB HDD is wired using the SATA port.

My specific use case is to have a lot of docker containers and use the system as a backup for pictures and videos for my family. I have about 2 TB of data so far that is stored in multiple storage items.

 

[amuzhaqi]

What's the purpose of the system?
Irrespective of the answer, a consumer-grade CPU of the latest generation and non-ECC RAM are not the best hardware choices, and there's no mention of motherboard and NIC yet. (With this generation, you're likely to come across 2.5GbE painbags.) Going for older, DDR4, hardware may be both safer and cheaper.

The purpose of the system is to have a few docker containers that I am using for personal projects about a dozen of them and also to use as a backup for my family pictures using nextcloud. So the main purpose is to run Nextcloud (as docker) and other Docker containers.

The motherboard is a ROG STRIX B760-I GAMING WIFI with a 2.5Gb ethernet port which is more than fine for my use case. I already have all the hardware mentioned so I am trying to figure out the best way how to make use of what I have.

 

[danb35]

So the main purpose is to run Nextcloud (as docker) and other Docker containers.

It honestly doesn't sound like TrueNAS is what you're looking for.

 

[Arwen]

In some ways, an USB boot device will work fine. BUT, it should be a reasonable quality, which you may not know until it fails. ZFS is very precise in how it maintains disk integrity. Many cheap USB flash drives barely last 100 uses. Which for a TrueNAS server, might mean just months of life. Just backup your configuration.

Their is a script floating around here in the forums that will backup your configuration daily to a data pool, which would likely be fine in the event your USB flash drive failed. Boot drive failures are not fatal, if you have a configuration backup. Even without a configuration backup, the ZFS data pools would be un-touched. (Only real problem is if you use key based encryption AND don't have backup of that before your boot drive fails.)

Glad your 16TB HDD is directly connected to a SATA port. That's good.

I can't really recommend what to do with the SATA SSDs verses the NMVe SSDs. From my point of view, it's more or less your choice. Others might have a recommendation.

 

[Davvo]

I agree with @danb35. SCALE uses kubernets.

Also, please read the following resources.

Introduction to ZFS

This is a short introduction to ZFS. It is really only intended to convey the bare minimum knowledge needed to start diving into ZFS and is in no way meant to cut Michael W. Lucas' and Allan Jude's book income. It is a bit of a spiritual...

www.truenas.com

Hardware Recommendations Guide

This is the latest edition of the FreeNAS Community hardware recommendations guide. The current major version is R2, dated January 2021, with the last minor update on 2021-01-24. The format has moved away from the forum post form factor, to...

www.truenas.com

As a side note, a while ago the kernel scheduled couldn't differentiate between peak and efficency cores: I do not know if this has been addressed yet, please do check.

 

[Etorix]

The motherboard is a ROG STRIX B760-I GAMING WIFI with a 2.5Gb ethernet port which is more than fine for my use case.

…except that all 2.5GbE, including those from Intel, are known to be problematic.
With "docker" as first requirement and storage as secondary, it does look you'd be happier with Proxmox or maybe even the docker plug-in of OMV rather than TrueNAS.

As a side note, a while ago the kernel scheduled couldn't differentiate between peak and efficency cores: I do not know if this has been addressed yet, please do check.

I think that iX will let it know loud and clear when the kernel in SCALE is updated beyond 5.15…