New user here. I would like your thoughts on my brand new setup

[LemonBag]

Hello,

New user here. I have watched a couple of videos enough about RAID and ZFS from LTT and Level1Techs to begin to understand the very basics.

I am building the following system linked below on pcpartpicker to handle mostly "nice to have" data and some "need to have" data in a respective 80/20 mix. I plan to use TrueNAS because from what I can understand it's smart enough with ZFS to tell you what you put in is what you actually put in. (Some protection against bitrot and whatnot----again feel free to correct me). I want to make this entire process as simple as possible. Price is not an issue per say, but I don't want to overspend of course. This is just a NAS afterall. I am doing this DIY method over a synology as I believe it's more cost effective?

For the "nice to have data", I know RAID and ZFS is not a backup. It is not geo-redundant. But, I'm starting a youtube channel and would like to be able to reference about recorded video I have taken for future use. In the event this "nice to have" data becomes lost, I'm okay with that. If this youtube channel does become successful enough to warrant a true backup system like the LTT petabyte server, then I'll readjust.

For the "need to have data", again, I know RAID and ZFS is not a backup. But, I'd like to keep it in this system rolling about for centralized convinience. I will be making copies of family photos into tapes and dvds to offsite locations.

To mix both, I was thinking when everything is setup under the ZFS filesystem, I would just make some sort of virtual drives or windows to keep everything looking separate even though everything is physically spread amongst many drives.

About the pcpartpicker list:

The CPU I cannot decide if I need the 12100, Celeron G6900, or Pentium gold G7400 I was thinking overspec'ing the system with the 12100 just to be safe, but I wanted to ask this forum before I buy anything. I am looking at 12th gen intel specifically here as I don't think AMD has all the bells and whistles as intel has canononically speaking. 12th gen intel also isn't that much more expensive than older 4 core/8 threaded variants. Celeron and pentium gold seem to be half the price of the 12100.

The motherboard: Cheapest one I could find that's compatible on pcpartpicker. I see the supermicro motherboard being mentioned a lot, but I am unsure if I need that really for my use case. Again, I want to make things simple and cheap here.

RAM: DDR4 ram is cheap. 16gb is the bare minimum for most things these days and from forum postings this seems to hold true for even truenas to my surprise.

Power supply: Overkill. I know. But, I had it lying around.

Storage: I see a 10tb renewed hard drive listing on amazon for 80 USD. I was planning on picking up two of them and running the data in some sort of RAID 1 array. Would it be better to instead spread out the allocated funds to a bunch of 4 terabyte hard drives in RAID 6 or something?

Case: Free hand me down. It has plenty of slots for hard drives in it as a normal sized ATX case.

Additional case fans: More lying around parts from my recent video editing PC upgrade.

Thank you for reading my posting, I am happy to clarify on parts if need be.

Part List - Intel Core i3-12100, Antec Three Hundred Illusion ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

Part List - Intel Core i3-12100, Antec Three Hundred Illusion ATX Mid Tower

pcpartpicker.com

 

[Ericloewe]

I have watched a couple of videos enough about RAID and ZFS from LTT

Oh no.

I will be making copies of family photos into tapes

Are you sure you want to get into tape? It's a high price of entry and a rather inconvenient format. The cost of tapes is not that low either... The general idea is fine, though.

To mix both, I was thinking when everything is setup under the ZFS filesystem, I would just make some sort of virtual drives or windows to keep everything looking separate even though everything is physically spread amongst many drives.

Sounds like you should read up on ZFS - my guide is linked in the signature below, for instance. The general idea is okay, but you seem to be applying it incorrectly.

The motherboard: Cheapest one I could find that's compatible on pcpartpicker. I see the supermicro motherboard being mentioned a lot, but I am unsure if I need that really for my use case. Again, I want to make things simple and cheap here.

There are two main problems with that:

1. You don't get ECC support, and it's weird to want to store things reliably and then not have ECC on the server.
2. Random consumer boards are often problematic in weird an wonderful ways. From dodgy firmware that won't reliably boot OSes other than Windows to dodgy or just bizarre component choices (e.g. Realtek NICs), we've seen a bit of everything here.

Do consider used hardware to bring the cost down without sacrificing reliability and actual server features.

 

[Davvo]

Hello,

New user here. I have watched a couple of videos enough about RAID and ZFS from LTT and Level1Techs to begin to understand the very basics.

Oh no.

Will make a proper post in a while, in the mean time look at my signature and start reading the links in the Useful Resources section.

 

[Davvo]

First things first, please read the following resources to lay down the very basics:

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to...

www.truenas.com

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

So, you want a reliable way to store your data: first thing, consider the use of used server-grade hardware instead of the traditional "gaming" one. You get very nice features (IPMI, ECC, ecc...) and the majority of gaming-grade motherboards come with realtek NICs, which are crap for TN as it is most 2.5 Gbe hardware; also, cutting-edge tech is usually not a good choice: 13th gen and DDR5 are a great way to spend way more than you need.

Is my Realtek ethernet really that bad?

One of the longest running issues faced here in the forums may be people who come to these forums, wanting to recycle an old PC into a NAS. In general, this is a bad idea because typical PC hardware isn't optimized towards the task. However...

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

Multiply your problems with SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers

In the last year or two, we've had a resurgence of users asking about SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers. Please, do NOT use port multipliers, and use cheap SATA controllers only after extensive research. SATA controllers and SATA...

www.truenas.com

Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks

This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...

www.truenas.com

Now, since you plan to store video files (info about the quality and lenght of it would be good to estimate the storage and performance needed) as well as small files such as photos (again, any estimations of the space required would be helpful), I propose you a two-pool system:

• an HDD one, used for your video storage and "nice to have" files
• an SSD one, used for small files and "must not lose" files

The reason I am suggesting this is because HDDs usually struggle with small files, and having a separate SSDs pool will become handy when (if) you will want jails, apps, or VMs; you totally could go with a single HDD pool though, and then see how things go.

About the pools' configurations, please read the following resources first:

ZFS Storage Pool Layout

This amazing document, created by iXsystems in February 2022 as a "White Paper", cleanly explains how to qualify pool performance touching briefly on how ZFS stores data and presents the advantages, performance and disadvantages of each pool...

www.truenas.com

https://www.digistor.com.au/the-latest/Whether-RAID-5-is-still-safe-in-2019/

Assessing the Potential for Data Loss

This guide was written to be read from top to bottom without jumps, with the intent of spreading awareness to both new and experienced users; the author of this document assumes the understanding of the concepts explained in the following...

www.truenas.com

For the SSDs pool I would go with a simple 2-way mirror; in regards with the HDDs pool, it depends on a few things... most importantly, how safe you want to be and how much flexibility you want to have for future expansion; do note that you need NAS/enterprise level HDDs, made to run 24/7: WD RED PLUS/PRO, Seagate's Ironwolfs and Ironwolfs PRO, and similar (HGST for example) are the required drives... everyone has its own preferences, just stay clear of SMR drives and understand that the lower the RPM is the lower the power consumption, noise, and heat dissipation the drives will have.

In your consideration you will have to factor in how well you will be able to monitor your system health and how quickly respond... I personally suggest the use of @joeschmuck fantastic multi_report script; you could even considering spinning down the HDDs pool, especially if you will go with the SSDs pool as well: we have a script even for that, but if this interests you we will have to make sure a few points are clear.

multi_report.sh version for Core and Scale

Multi-Report Tool to chart and record statistical data on your drives. This will email the results to the end user. This will also send alerts via email as well.

www.truenas.com

HDD Spindown Timer

Disk spindown has always been an issue for various TrueNAS / FreeNAS users. This script utilizes iostat to detect I/O operations (reads, writes) on each disk. If a disk was neither read nor written for a given period of time, it is considered...

www.truenas.com

You can use the following calculator to estimate the space you will get by different pool layouts and the price of it.

ZFS Capacity Calculator - WintelGuy.com

ZFS / RAIDZ Capacity Calculator - evaluets performance of different RAIDZ types and configurations

wintelguy.com

For your needs I would suggest you using CORE, 16GB of RAM will be enough (especially if you will use the SSDs pool).
You will also have to consider what to use as your boot drive, which has to be the boot drive only; I am having a good experience with a MLC internal USB so far, but more traditional options are sata-dom and sata SSDs. If you take a few precautions (like using joe's previously mentioned script) you won't need to worry about this drive failing.

Finally, you have to make sure the PSU of you choice is big enough... and of a reputable brand preferably: you don't want your system to fry because of it, do you?

Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance

I've seen about 1,000 threads like this one where people decide that they can power a dozen hard drives off a 360 watt supply. DO NOT DO THIS. I've seen another 1,000 threads where people decide to buy the cheapest power supply that they can...

www.truenas.com

This is just an introduction... as you have seen TN is not a product for everyone, you need to be willing to learn a few things. The good news is that as long as you remain inside the known area, you have a great community that can help you.

We require further information regarding your needs in order to give you a more practical answer.

 

[LemonBag]

This is a great reply! Thank you! I will be checking out these links and read even more! Sorry for the late reply. I got notified via email of the first reply, checked out those links, and then I didn't catch other replies unfortunately otherwise I would've gotten back sooner