Need some advice pls with HW and VDEVS

[Alpine7513]

Here is my situation. I had a Qnap TS-451+ with 4 x 10TB drives in raid 5. It turns out that the infamous j1900 LPC failure happened to me. I knew nothing about this.

I recently upgrade my main system and had the old stripped system. Intel DG67SW with an i7-2600K and 32gb of ram. I am paranoid so that all my videos and audiobooks and pictures and software were backed up on multiple machines on multiple drives in each machine. I was able to piece together everything for the most part. The things I lost were non-important.

So I decided to use the old strip system for a TrueNas Scale box to get me up as a temporary unit until I can buy a new Qnap and hopefully insert the drives into the new system and hopefully fingers crossed my data will show up. If not, it’s not a big loss .

I installed 4 x western digital red, 6 TB drives I had laying around from the upgrade to the 10TB drives in the dead qnap. in the new truenas box as a zf1 vdev. Attached to an LSI HBA with two 250gb Samsung 860 ssd’s mirrored as boot drives attached to the MB's 6gb sata ports.
only the 6TB drives are on the LSI HBA.

This is just serving movies, TV shows that I’ve ripped from DVDs and Blu-ray‘s and my audiobook collection ripped from CDs to my local couple of computers only. but I am wondering should I install 2 x 120 Gb Samsung ssd’s as cache drives and maybe two more ssd’s for log drives? Of course the cache vdev would be stripped and the log zdev would be mirrored.

Is this overkill for just something in serving movies running a Plex server and saving my backups also?

The HBA is an LSI 9211-8i and the motherboard is maxed out at 32gb of ram.

It’s not using a lot of power I mean I’m not really worried too much about it but worst case scenario I have a Lenovo TD-340 server with dual processors with E5-2440 V2's and 96 gigs of RAM with eight bays that I could use instead but it’s going to use a ton of power with the dual 750W power supplies. am I over thinking this too much or will the 2600K be fine for what I’m using like I said again it’s just for accessing movies and audiobooks photos and software that I’ve worked on.

Do I need the Cache and Log vdevs? It maxes out my gig network now as it sits.

I am a complete noob at Linux and truenas . I am running Truenas Scale.

Thank you for any and all help. I truly appreciate it.

 

[Alpine7513]

Here is my situation. I had a Qnap TS-451+ with 4 x 10TB drives in raid 5. It turns out that the infamous j1900 LPC failure happened to me. I knew nothing about this.

I recently upgrade my main system and had the old stripped system. Intel DG67SW with an i7-2600K and 32gb of ram. I am paranoid so that all my videos and audiobooks and pictures and software were backed up on multiple machines on multiple drives in each machine. I was able to piece together everything for the most part. The things I lost were non-important.

So I decided to use the old strip system for a TrueNas Scale box to get me up as a temporary unit until I can buy a new Qnap and hopefully insert the drives into the new system and hopefully fingers crossed my data will show up. If not, it’s not a big loss .

I installed 4 x western digital red, 6 TB drives I had laying around from the upgrade to the 10TB drives in the dead qnap. in the new truenas box as a zf1 vdev. Attached to an LSI HBA with two 250gb Samsung 860 ssd’s mirrored as boot drives attached to the MB's 6gb sata ports.
only the 6TB drives are on the LSI HBA.

This is just serving movies, TV shows that I’ve ripped from DVDs and Blu-ray‘s and my audiobook collection ripped from CDs to my local couple of computers only. but I am wondering should I install 2 x 120 Gb Samsung ssd’s as cache drives and maybe two more ssd’s for log drives? Of course the cache vdev would be stripped and the log zdev would be mirrored.

Is this overkill for just something in serving movies running a Plex server and saving my backups also?

The HBA is an LSI 9211-8i and the motherboard is maxed out at 32gb of ram.

It’s not using a lot of power I mean I’m not really worried too much about it but worst case scenario I have a Lenovo TD-340 server with dual processors with E5-2440 V2's and 96 gigs of RAM with eight bays that I could use instead but it’s going to use a ton of power with the dual 750W power supplies. am I over thinking this too much or will the 2600K be fine for what I’m using like I said again it’s just for accessing movies and audiobooks photos and software that I’ve worked on.

Do I need the Cache and Log vdevs? It maxes out my gig network now as it sits.

I am a complete noob at Linux and truenas . I am running Truenas Scale.

Thank you for any and all help. I truly appreciate it.

The SSD's are spares that I already have from upgrades. Thought the 120gb drives might be better than the 500gb one's i have laying around.

 

[PhilD13]

Design is up to you. Use what you currently have as long as it meets the basic specs of Truenas and see how it works for you with your setup. It will very likely prove adequate. That said a few pointers to consider.

• Make sure you have backups of the data and it is safe and can be restored properly. If you don't know then find out now before possibly getting into a situation where you lose data.
• After initial install and configuration of the system, save and download a copy of the Truenas config file. It may save your bacon.
• Per vdev a zraid1 (raid5 in QNAP) is okay for 4 drives, for 6-10 drives in a vdev use zraid2. Generally Truenas will try to do a good job of seeing the prepared drives and recommending a zraid level. Just understand what is being recommended and if it is suitable for your needs.
• QNAP arrays are not compatible with Truenas and are not plug and play in either direction. If the former QNAP drives are inserted in Truenas, the Debian under system and thus Truenas will recognize there is an array and promptly hide all the drives until they have their array information properly erased from the command line.
• If going back to QNAP the Qnap system may or may not balk at the Truenas drives for the same reason as above of incompatibility, but I have never tried going back (I have QNAP too) that direction.
• Make sure the drives you use are CMR type drives NOT SMR type drives. Don't assume, Look up the specs on the manufacture site for the specific model of drive and verify. If not sure ask and provide the model numbers. Truenas will make you have a really bad day trying to use SMR.
• If you are new to Linux and Truenas, then don't get fancy and use Cache, log, metadata vdevs. You will increase the possibility to lose your data for little or no gain and won't understand why. There is extensive documentation in the Truenas docs and several developers/very experienced users have written topics on the subjects and when to and when to not use them.
• With only 32Gb ram you will actually slow down the entire system by using cache of any kind to the point you will think the system is junk. Any cache gains are not really seen to after 64GB ram and or more ram. It has to do with the type of system (copy on write) Truenas is.
• You will need one small drive for Truenas to use as a boot drive. I used a couple ssd's I had laying around in a mirror. They can't be used for data or anything else so plan accordingly.
• Data transfer to/from QNAP and to/from Truenas is done with rsync. Replication is for Truenas system to/from Truenas system.

 

[Alpine7513]

Design is up to you. Use what you currently have as long as it meets the basic specs of Truenas and see how it works for you with your setup. It will very likely prove adequate. That said a few pointers to consider.

• Make sure you have backups of the data and it is safe and can be restored properly. If you don't know then find out now before possibly getting into a situation where you lose data.
• After initial install and configuration of the system, save and download a copy of the Truenas config file. It may save your bacon.
• Per vdev a zraid1 (raid5 in QNAP) is okay for 4 drives, for 6-10 drives in a vdev use zraid2. Generally Truenas will try to do a good job of seeing the prepared drives and recommending a zraid level. Just understand what is being recommended and if it is suitable for your needs.
• QNAP arrays are not compatible with Truenas and are not plug and play in either direction. If the former QNAP drives are inserted in Truenas, the Debian under system and thus Truenas will recognize there is an array and promptly hide all the drives until they have their array information properly erased from the command line.
• If going back to QNAP the Qnap system may or may not balk at the Truenas drives for the same reason as above of incompatibility, but I have never tried going back (I have QNAP too) that direction.
• Make sure the drives you use are CMR type drives NOT SMR type drives. Don't assume, Look up the specs on the manufacture site for the specific model of drive and verify. If not sure ask and provide the model numbers. Truenas will make you have a really bad day trying to use SMR.
• If you are new to Linux and Truenas, then don't get fancy and use Cache, log, metadata vdevs. You will increase the possibility to lose your data for little or no gain and won't understand why. There is extensive documentation in the Truenas docs and several developers/very experienced users have written topics on the subjects and when to and when to not use them.
• With only 32Gb ram you will actually slow down the entire system by using cache of any kind to the point you will think the system is junk. Any cache gains are not really seen to after 64GB ram and or more ram. It has to do with the type of system (copy on write) Truenas is.
• You will need one small drive for Truenas to use as a boot drive. I used a couple ssd's I had laying around in a mirror. They can't be used for data or anything else so plan accordingly.
• Data transfer to/from QNAP and to/from Truenas is done with rsync. Replication is for Truenas system to/from Truenas system.

Thank you so much!!