New Home NAS, thoughts on this build?

[intavg]

I am looking to replace a 15 year old Buffalo mini NAS with something a bit more functional and secure, so I am looking to build a TrueNAS Scale system. This is what I am looking at so far, hopefully people with more experience can give me some suggestions for improvement.

Beyond the file storage, I am looking to run a Ubuntu VM to have an in home web and database server, and a Windows 11 VM to run some network utilities that are currently Windows only.

Motherboard	SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SSM-F-O
CPU	Intel Xeon E3-1225 V6 Kaby Lake 3.3 GHz
RAM	2x 32GB Unbuffered ECC UDIMM DDR4 2400 MHz
Case	SilverStone Technology Premium Mini-ITX/DTX Small Form Factor NAS Computer Case, Black (DS380B)
PSU	SilverStone Technology SX500-G 500W SFX Fully Modular 80 Plus Gold PSU
OS Drive	256 GB Samsung NVME (smallest I could find) (Might be an SSD, looking at the MB again)
Pool Drives	6x WD Red Plus

 

[NugentS]

Query - for your use case as described above would Core be a better fit. You can still run VM's under Core
No NVMe on that board without using a PCIe slot wich would be a waste for a boot drive.

Watch the drive temps in that case

 

[Etorix]

Micro-ATX board in mini-ITX case is going to be a hard fit! Do yourself a favour and seek a better case; the DS-380 is an absolute pain to work with.

 

[intavg]

Query - for your use case as described above would Core be a better fit. You can still run VM's under Core
No NVMe on that board without using a PCIe slot wich would be a waste for a boot drive.

Watch the drive temps in that case

The reason I went with Scale over Core was because I want to explore using Docker, which I don't think is an option with Core, and my understanding from the documentation was that the VM support was a bit more robust compared to Core. Is there any drawback to using Scale instead of Core?

 

[intavg]

Micro-ATX board in mini-ITX is going to be a hard fit! Do yourself a favour and seek a better case; the DS-380 is an absolute pain to work with.

Yeah, after doing some more research it looks like all the cases in that form factor have thermal issues. But a bigger case does open up the motherboard options.

Thanks.

 

[NugentS]

Its why I went with a Fractal Design R5 (and a tiny motherboard)
Note that the fans in the R5 are NOT up to cooling 7 HDD's (where I had them) as they are very quiet and low airflow. I used better high static pressure fans instead but on a fan controller so I could turn them up / down till I got the balance right

 

[Etorix]

The reason I went with Scale over Core was because I want to explore using Docker, which I don't think is an option with Core, and my understanding from the documentation was that the VM support was a bit more robust compared to Core. Is there any drawback to using Scale instead of Core?

SCALE suffers from memory management issues, meaning that only half of memory is available for ARC. If your VMs and apps take up lots of RAM, it may not matter. But if your NAS is mainly about storage, a SCALE build basically requires twice of the amount of RAM compared with a CORE build to deliver the same performance.
Note that, formally, "Docker" is not an option with SCALE. SCALE runs containers, but from Kubernetes; Docker itself is being removed in Cobia and replaced with containerd. So typical Linux recipes for Docker or docker-compose will NOT work with SCALE. If the apps you want are available as Helm charts from the official catalogue or from TrueCharts, all is fine. If you do want vanilla Docker to play with yourself, you'll need to install it in a VM.

 

[Aipoc76]

I just built one in this case, was actually very easy to work with.

Show : case pic

I did replace the 2 fans in the back with 2

GDSTIME 92mm x 38mm PWM Fan High Static Pressure 90mm 12V Brushless DC Cooling Fan 4 Pin Dual Ball Bearing.​

attacked to a sata PWM fan controller.

 

[sfatula]

Docker command was removed from Cobia. However, nothing stops one from using docker on another machine and simply building their own container and using that on Scale. It's not a big deal to me at least that it isn't on Scale. Scale runs the containers, they can be built anywhere. I build mine on a Raspberry Pi (yes even though it's arm).

But using docker (or more appropriately containers) is a thing to learn, and Scale is good for that.

Mine is in a Fractal Design Define S2 for great cooling. Easy to work with.

Don't forget a UPS if you don't have one.

 

[intavg]

Ok, thanks for all the suggestions. I will restart my search for a case.

I'll also switch over to Core based on the container change.

Thanks everyone!