New TrueNAS build from donor Thinkstation P330 - Recommendations Needed

[pace]

Hi everyone,

It's really nice to find this forum.
Recently I have been thinking about purchasing a NAS, I was planning to sell my ThinkStation to fund some of this.
I started where most people start, by looking at the Synology and QNap products that where already available. After seeing the prices, I didn't think I was getting value for money.

Then I found TrueNas, and it seems to offer what i'm looking for at a reasonable price.
Maybe i'm getting a little ahead of myself here, so let me back up for a moment.

I worked as a photographer for many years, and worked with an opensource linux based photo editing workflow.
I built this editing rig from an IBM ThinkStation P330 tower, nothing too crazy:-

4 x 8Gb DDR4-2666 UDIMM 1.2v CL19
1 x Intel i7-8700 (12 core)
2 x Toshiba 2Tb SATA 6.0Gb's
1 x Western Digital WD10EZEZ-08WN4A0
1 x 500Gb CT500P2SSD8 Nvme
1 x P400 Quattro Card
400W Lenovo power supply - PN:SP50H29513

I believe it has a mATX WIN DPK motherboard.


It seems like I can really re-use some of this hardware, and my plan would be to build a basic NAS first, then upgrade it as needed.
My main usage would be file storage for my photos, around 2TB, but I also want to run VM's on the rig, maybe a web based app, and also a test environment for docker builds etc.

Whats important here is that the unit is pretty quiet, but also looks slick, as the ThinkStation case is just horrendous.
I'm based in Europe, so buying part here would be preferred.


I need to scope a nice case for this build, one that could take the current mATX board and hardware, but later I think I would want to upgrade the motherboard.
I also want to upgrade my drives to SATA NAS Drives, for reliability.

Based on my current hardware, and my requirements, I'm open to any recommendations, first for the case, then anything that I should consider while starting this build, maybe network card and storage controllers?


I'm excited to get into this build, so look forward to any suggestions and recommendations you may have, and any advice to be mindful off.


Thanks in advance eveyone!


Pace

 

[pace]

I've been looking at the Fractal Design Define R5, case seems doesn't seem to be much larger than the P330 tower. Has anyone used this case?

 

[Samuel Tai]

I've been looking at the Fractal Design Define R5, case seems doesn't seem to be much larger than the P330 tower. Has anyone used this case?

Just use the Forum Search, and you'll see lots of folks considering, using, and modifying the Define R5.

 

[Etorix]

I built this editing rig from an IBM ThinkStation P330 tower, nothing too crazy:-

Not much to reuse in a NAS…

4 x 8Gb DDR4-2666 UDIMM 1.2v CL19

Not ECC, which would be preferred. But, depending on the number of VMs/containers, 32 GB could do.

1 x Intel i7-8700 (12 core)

No ECC.

2 x Toshiba 2Tb SATA 6.0Gb's
1 x Western Digital WD10EZEZ-08WN4A0

Not much to do with three old small drives of different sizes.
2 TB to store now. How much more is expected in the coming years?
In any case you need more drives and/or bigger drives. Minimum would be 2* 4 TB in mirror. But safer configurations are raidz2 (4 drives min.) or 3-way mirror, depending how paranoid you are.

1 x 500Gb CT500P2SSD8 Nvme

Could be used for VM/docker. Preferably mirrored, but a single drive, backed-up to the HDD pool could do. Or boot drive of course.

1 x P400 Quattro Card

No use for TrueNAS.

400W Lenovo power supply

Could do, depending on the number of drives… but a new PSU would not be the biggest expense.

As for the case, as long as it fits the motherboard and the drives (with some cooling) it's good, so it's your own aesthetic choice.

 

[pace]

Not much to reuse in a NAS…

Hey thanks for the response. What I'm hearing is its better to just build from new and expand from there.

Appreciate you taking the time to point this out.

 

[Davvo]

I'm based in Europe, so buying part here would be preferred.

There are a few professional vendors in the EU on eBay, mainly in Germany, that sell the things we need.
Buying used parts from outside is not an option for us europeans, and this limits us a bit in the used market.
If you need help I can PM you their names.

I can't stress enough how important is ECC for data integrity, you should really consider using it. Sadly, ECC is not mainstream in the consumer market which means we have less options.

I suggest you reading 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

ECC vs non-ECC RAM and ZFS

I've seen many people unfortunately lose their zpools over this topic, so I'm going to try to provide as much detail as possible. If you don't want to read to the end then just go with ECC RAM. For those of you that want to understand just how destructive non-ECC RAM can be, then I'd encourage...

www.truenas.com

I wish you a fruitful journey!

 

[pace]

Thank you everyone for your amazing comments, I'm getting into the research now and beginning the journey