Newbie building Jonsbo N1 Mini NAS for Raw 6K Video Editing

[Kraktov]

I just bought a Jonsbo N1 from Newegg and I want to make an 80TB-100TB NAS to edit raw 6K video right out of it on Davinci Resolve. (2GB to 15GB per clip)

I've read that 10GBE is a good idea for future proofing, but I'm not sure how this can benefit me right now since all I have at home is a Verizon Wi-Fi 6 router and my PC has a X570i Mobo with (2.5) Intel Gigabit Ethernet & Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) (No more expandability on the Mobo, since the only PCIE port has my Graphics Card)

I've also read that ECC RAM may be benefitial for this, not really sure how, since I'm ignorant on the subject of NAS & ECC.

I'm planning to buy 5 x 20TB WD Red Pro drives, since sometimes I find them for $350 a piece and they are CMR drives, which are supposed to be faster and more suitable for my purposes.

Requirements:

• Mini-ITX
• Speed & Total Storage are a priority over parity
• Fast Read-Write Speeds

I've already read about a similar build from a reddit post from user: u/poipoipoi post where ends up buying an EPYC3101D4I-2T since it already has:

1. 2x 10GB Lan Ports
2. 4 x ECC Compatible DDR4 DIMM slots (rather than 2 as on standard Mini Itx Mobos)
3. Included EPYC 3101 4 cores, 4 threads processor with Heatsink
4. 6 SATA Ports in total 4 x Oculink port + 2 x SATAIII ports (instead of 4 like regular Mini Itx Mobos)
5. u/poipoipoi also added an Ableconn Dual PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Adapter Card with 2 x 1TB NVMe for write cache + 1 x 512GB NVMe on the Mobo for Read Cache

Here is the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarde...bie_moving_off_synology_and_going_to_build_a/

Questions:

1. Is 64GB of RAM enough for 80TB-100TB?
2. Is ECC really necessary?
3. Is WIP exclusively managed by the cache drives if I proper configure TrueNAS/UnRaid?
4. Is 10GB LAN really necessary for editing 6K raw video files? (2GB to 15GB per clip)
5. Are CMR drives better for my purpose than SMR drives?
6. Is this 4 core/threads EPYC 3101 a good option or will a 6c/12t Ryzen achieve more performance?
7. If I do a setup similar to u/poipoipoi, should I add an additional 2.5" SSD for a bootable drive?

• Or can a caching/storage drive be used as a bootable drive?

 

[Arwen]

I can't answer most of your questions, but;

2. Is ECC really necessary?
No, but if you care about your data, then yes.


5. Are CMR drives better for my purpose than SMR drives?
Absolutely. You NEED to avoid SMR drives when using ZFS. That said, only Western Digital's Red SMR drives appear to have a firmware bug that makes them really unsuitable for use with ZFS.


7. If I do a setup similar to u/poipoipoi, should I add an additional 2.5" SSD for a bootable drive?
Or can a caching/storage drive be used as a bootable drive?
In general, you can't really share L2ARC, SLOG or storage drive with a boot drive. (And their is no such thing as a write cache in ZFS, SLOG is a Separate intent LOG for synchronous writes.) So, yes, a separate 32GB to 64GB SSD is a good choice for boot drive.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I would suggest reading the first couple of documents from the "Recommended readings" in my signature. That should give you a much better overall understanding and also help asking additional, targeted questions.

As to the Reddit link, some of the advice there is questionable in my opinion (incl. the LTT video).

As to your questions:

4. The network speed is only one thing and most people look mostly/only there. The bigger challenge is mostly (and also here) that you must able to saturate that bandwidth with the underlying storage. Here, the next mistake is to only look at the maximum transfer rate of HDDs. There are situations (i.e. purely sequential access) where this is indeed the limiting factor. But for scrubbing the timeline, you will have a decent amount of random access. And the latter is typically much slower than the ca. 250 MB/s we see advertised. I would recommend to search what hardware others used for a similar use-case. My gut feeling tells me there is a decent chance of this not delivering what you would expect.

3. What is "WIP" in this context? How is unRaid relevant?

 

[Etorix]

Mini-ITX

That's going to be a pain and severely limit your options.

u/poipoipoi also added an Ableconn Dual PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Adapter Card with 2 x 1TB NVMe for write cache + 1 x 512GB NVMe on the Mobo for Read Cache

There's no such thing as "write cache" (or then it's your RAM). ZFS will typically flush transaction groups after about 5-10s, and pause/throttle further incoming data if the pool cannot write fast enough.

Is 64GB of RAM enough for 80TB-100TB?

Possibly if it's just storage, but barely enough to have a 512 GB L2ARC.

Is WIP exclusively managed by the cache drives if I proper configure TrueNAS/UnRaid?

What is "WIP"???

Is 10GB LAN really necessary for editing 6K raw video files? (2GB to 15GB per clip)

That depends how fast you want the data coming to the editing workstation… So I suppose that would be useful.

Is this 4 core/threads EPYC 3101 a good option or will a 6c/12t Ryzen achieve more performance?

If sharing with SMB, cores are irrelevant but base frequency matters, so a lowly Ryzen or Core i3 would do better than embedded EPYC.

Or can a caching/storage drive be used as a bootable drive?

Answer is "NO". #8 in @ChrisRJ 's recommended readings

I have to waste an entire drive just for booting?

With the advent of TrueNAS Scale, we seem to be getting a large number of people from the Linux community who are not quite grasping what TrueNAS is. TrueNAS is not a "Linux distro" and it is not designed to try to meet your arbitrarily spec'd...

www.truenas.com

 

[Kraktov]

5. Are CMR drives better for my purpose than SMR drives?
Absolutely. You NEED to avoid SMR drives when using ZFS. That said, only Western Digital's Red SMR drives appear to have a firmware bug that makes them really unsuitable for use with ZFS.

Thank you!

What alternative options to Western Digital's Red do you recommend for 20TB HDDs?

 

[ChrisRJ]

You should also look at enterprise/data center drives, so one class higher than NAS drives. Unless you want to spin down drives, but that is a bit dicey with any drive in terms of lifetime.

What I have seen pretty consistently is that data center drives (e.g. Seagate Exos, Toshiba) are cheaper. This may not always be the case, but it is definitely worth checking. I must, on the other hand, say that my personal experience with Seagate Exos X16 16 TB has been less than impressive. The RMA process was always smooth, but I had 3 out of 8 drives replaced. This is purely anecdotal, though, and I rather have a working RMA process than the hope of no drive failing. But that is personal taste.

 

[Arwen]

Thank you!

What alternative options to Western Digital's Red do you recommend for 20TB HDDs?

Not all of the WD Reds maybe SMR. That's one of the annoying things about how they marketed them, stealthy. Further, this product line does not get near 20TB sized HDDs.

The WD Red Pro line, (all CMR), has 20TB & 22TB drives. Just know that the WD Red Pros will take more power & generate more heat.
The WD Red Plus, (also all CMR), tops out at 14TB.

Some of the Enterprise drives from Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital are decent choices. And, sometimes cost effective as well.

 

[HoneyBadger]

1. Is 64GB of RAM enough for 80TB-100TB?

Look at it more in the sense of "is 64GB enough to fit my workload?" If you are the only editor working off this machine, with clips between 2-15GB in size, then the answer is likely "yes" - bear in mind that the first read of data from disks will be significantly slower than pulling from RAM. I don't believe L2ARC will be of great benefit unless you expect to be cycling through more than 64GB of video files in a single project; and if you are, you're beginning to enter the point where an all-SSD pool makes sense for the "active project" and moving data between them when they're considered "complete".

2. Is ECC really necessary?

Yes, if you value your data.

3. Is WIP exclusively managed by the cache drives if I proper configure TrueNAS/UnRaid?

Is "WIP" meant to be interpreted as "Writes In Progress"? I can't speak to how UnRaid handles (or if it even has) a "write cache" but ZFS does not have a traditional tiered write cache; SLOG is a "write log" as mentioned by @Arwen previously, and will only benefit you if you're doing synchronous writes that demand a low-latency response. Your workflow is unlikely to require synchronous writes - I presume you're going to load a clip into DaVinci, edit, and then render to a target folder or save the changes to the raw video file; they aren't being committed "on the fly" to the disk. Sync is for "transactional" writes that can't be repeated, such as inserting/deleting records from a DB, or data inside a VM disk.

4. Is 10GB LAN really necessary for editing 6K raw video files? (2GB to 15GB per clip)

Absolutely. Using something like the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 6K for an examples, it's showing a data rate of anywhere from 194-483MB/s for the "6K RAW Q0" preset - all of which are well over the theoretical maximum 128MB/s you could get from 1Gbps networking. Considering that your user avatar appears to be a RED Digital Cinema camera, you're likely to be in or above that ballpark for bitrate.

5. Are CMR drives better for my purpose than SMR drives?

SMR drives aren't fit for purpose as described by others.

6. Is this 4 core/threads EPYC 3101 a good option or will a 6c/12t Ryzen achieve more performance

You'd have to switch motherboards (and ensure you purchase one with ECC support, which may be challenging in the ITX form factor) if you go for the Ryzen; with that said, SMB performance is heavily dependent on single-thread speed, and the EPYC 3101 appears to have a 2.1GHz base/2.9GHz boost speed - significantly lower than something like a Ryzen 3300X at 3.8GHz/4.3GHz. Same core count, but around 50% faster per core.

Question- is Intel a consideration?

7. If I do a setup similar to u/poipoipoi, should I add an additional 2.5" SSD for a bootable drive?

Based on the description in that thread, the "write cache" SSDs aren't likely to ever be used - there or here. You should likely just omit them entirely and use a single smaller device for booting. Refer also to my answer to question #1 regarding L2ARC and how I don't think it will necessarily be beneficial here.

Other thoughts - is there a specific reason you have limited yourself to the ITX form factor? Your goals of performance and capacity seem at odds with the small size, as well as limiting your component selection and the ability to expand via PCIe cards.

Regardless, I would look at a six-drive configuration with RAIDZ2 - I know that "parity" was listed as less important that speed, but I imagine you wouldn't want to re-shoot hours of video due to data loss from running a riskier Z1 configuration.

 

[Nomad]

Don't let perfect get in the way of good enough....

This has always been a driving factor in any build. I ran SMR drives for years much to the shock and amaze of everyone here before anyone even knew to look at the tech. My use case is very different as it's just archival data so mostly writing OR reading, but rarely at the same time. If you are doing editing where you are coping to your workstation, then moving it back you would be fine. If you are trying to live edit *Which I can't imagine you would be* but just in case you are, then stay away from SMR. Here is a good primary so you can make an informed choice. https://www.minitool.com/backup-tips/cmr-vs-smr.html
https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/3rd-server-new-build-x11-ssl-f.59533/ - Link to my build about using WD Green drives and 6x6tb STEL6000100 Seagate drives (SMR). Let the hate flow though you young padawan.

Do not consider getting a motherboard with 8 sata ports as $50 more spent, but as time and data investment.
Investment 1 --> Your boot drive will be more reliable; no headaches when usb dies, no time spent to reinstall and restore config, faster updates.
Investment 2 --> More importantly, in case you need to change a failing drive, if you have spare sata ports, you can add the new one without removing the old first

I spend the extra money and then when it was time to upgrade, I never saw value in my investment as it was put here because my PSU didn't have more than 6 SATA connectors. Take everything that is said on the forums with a grain of salt and do your own research.

If you have money to burn or it is mission critical to making you money, then spend it and write it off as an expense.
98% Safe for $1,000
99.999% Safe for $10,000

Assign your risk value to the data and spend accordingly.
And always have a backup :)

 

[sretalla]

Link to my build about using WD Green drives and 6x6tb STEL6000100 Seagate drives (SMR).

That's highly irresponsible advice. It would be at the peril of others to follow it.

Your experience may be exceptional in not having bitten you (yet), but recommending it as a "good" or even satisfactory option is not something I like to see here.

There are plenty of sad stories in these forums involving SMR which I would like to see fewer of in future, not more. Don't do it if you like your data.

 

[Nomad]

That's highly irresponsible advice. It would be at the peril of others to follow it.

Your experience may be exceptional in not having bitten you (yet), but recommending it as a "good" or even satisfactory option is not something I like to see here.

There are plenty of sad stories in these forums involving SMR which I would like to see fewer of in future, not more. Don't do it if you like your data.

If you have money to burn or it is mission critical to making you money, then spend it and write it off as an expense.
98% Safe for $1,000
99.999% Safe for $10,000

Assign your risk value to the data and spend accordingly.

I'm almost 10 years in and event admit I'm just using it a manner which is safer (Archive) for SMR. Please fully read my post before having a meltdown. For every post which goes wrong there are 1,000 more people "shucking" drives for cost savings. If a recovery from backup saves 90% of the cost, then that is a risk vs reward conversation not a right way vs wrong way.

- I also haven't been robbed, (YET)
- I also haven't lost the server in a flood (YET)
- I also haven't had aliens come take my data. (YET)

Everything in life hasn't happened until it happens. No one is saying you are ever 100% safe which is why you should always have a backup. That's the number one rule for any NAS.