Newbie converts from Synology 2.0

[CzarofAK]

Hello all,
after I have got good input (here: Newbie converts from Synology and here: Reuse old Supermicro X10SRH-CF) and playing around with HW and SW, I have come to the following decisions and ideas:

1. to fiddle around as a noob, on my BACKUP (TrueNAS) and screw something up, is to costly!
2. i had to install the system several time the system from scratch, as some manuals were outdated... etc.
3. therefore I will split my "live" environment and backup on two servers
   1. "live": my X10SRF-CF will be used with proxmox as my Nextcloud, HomeAssistant, ispy-agent-dvr, LMS, PiHole and ZeroTier Server
   2. "TrueNAS": a second server with a X10SLH-F-B, E3-1220V3 and 16GB RAM will be setup as my TrueNAS
4. "TrueNAS" should pull the backups from the "live" server and create snapshots
5. "TrueNAS" shall push a backup to Infomaniak

Questions about the "TrueNAS"-server:

• is the TrueNAS HW sufficient?
  • RAM, CPU upgrade required? (guess not)
• is a 3-wide Z1 be sufficient (see here)?
• will that "pull"-backup work? (Rsync?)
• shall let it run all the time, or shall i switch it on and off with a schedule? what is healthier for the HW?
  • On the flight simulators i am working on, we leave the old computers run 24/7 as they run more stable like that...

Did i miss something?

Afterburner: is ZeroTier - out of the box, safe?

Thanks!

 

[joeschmuck]

shall let it run all the time, or shall i switch it on and off with a schedule? what is healthier for the HW?

• On the flight simulators i am working on, we leave the old computers run 24/7 as they run more stable like that...

That is a controversial topic. You will hear both sides, let the drives run, sleep the drives. My opinion is it will depend on how often the drives would spin-up if you let them sleep. And this is something you should periodically monitor to ensure the drives are not being woke up buy external requests. This would not be the issue if you planned to power the unit down of course and only power it up when you needed to use it.

Personally I let my drives spin 24/7. It does consume more power and I'm not using the drives every day, but my experience is the drives tend to last well beyond the warranty period. Of course if you are only using the NAS once a week for a few hours, it might be worth powering the system off between uses. There is a lot of different viewpoints on the internet. It's really your choice.

RAM, CPU upgrade required? (guess not)

The CPU is likely fine, the RAM will depend on what you need to do with the NAS. If it's strictly for backups as you indicated above, 16GB is fine. I run 16GB RAM all the time. However if you want to add VM's then you will need more RAM to support that effort.

is a 3-wide Z1 be sufficient (see here)?

That depends on how important your data is. Since you are backing this stuff up to the cloud, it will likely be fine. If it's a lot of data, ask yourself "How long will it take to recover all that data off the cloud? It can be a very long time depending on your internet speed and the amount of data you have stored and want to recover.

 

[CzarofAK]

Of course if you are only using the NAS once a week for a few hours, it might be worth powering the system off between uses.

Thats most probably what i want to do, also to prevent it from possible attacks.

However if you want to add VM's then you will need more RAM to support that effort.

No, i inteded to do so. But as i wrote above, TrueNAS is really not the place for a noob to fiddle around with apps and VMs...

That depends on how important your data is.

There are my Family Fotos, Bank account data, ownership certificate, etc... Yes, important stuff, but not more than 2TB at the minute.
So rather more drives with less capacity to spread the risk?

 

[CzarofAK]

@ChrisRJ thanks for you inputs, i totally agree on your comments of the closed thread.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, important stuff, but not more than 2TB at the minute.
So rather more drives with less capacity to spread the risk?

2TB is a small amount of data thankfully. If in your situation, I'd use a pair of 4TB or 6TB drives in a Mirror. This would allow you to add more data over a period of time.

Thats most probably what i want to do, also to prevent it from possible attacks.

Keep your NAS behind a firewall, do not expose it to the internet directly. My NAS has access to the internet but I cannot access my NAS from the WAN and I have no need to access it. But if you desire that, NextCloud might be an option.

Now to combine both questions into a possible solution:
If you have a small amount of data (2TB is small) and you want to access the data remotely, you could use a paid Cloud service and that would likely be less expensive than buying new hardware for TrueNAS to run on. Think about cost of the system, electricity, cooling, hard drive replacements, etc... It's worth considering. Of course maybe you want a NAS and that is fine too. I like my NAS and prefer it for my needs over Cloud storage.

 

[kiriak]

I am in a similar situation.
Home user with a small amount of data and previously had a Synology NAS.
No IT background.

I have about 1+ Tb of data. Maybe it would cost me a little less on cloud (given that if I used cloud I should have 2 different copies on cloud to be safe).
The extra little cost (and a lot extra time) is ok for me since this is a hobby also for me.

I choose TN because for me it was the ultimate solution regarding data integrity.
The data is on a mirror 2 X 4 TB HDDs and I keep 3 backups on usb HDDs of site.
One of the 3 backups is snapshots replication, the other 2 are with a PC backup program.

Access from outside my LAN is through a VPN server running on my firewall /router (easiest and safest way for me).

The TN is Core, I experimented a little with Scale with mixed feelings (just because I am a newbie)
For a couple of services I wanted (Syncthing, Unifi server, Piwigo and maybe Nextcloud) I bought a used mini PC and installed OMV. It runs on 6 W and the TN is up on the weekend and the electricity savings will pay the mini PC off.

Before switching from Synology I spend some weekend splaying with the (then) FreeNAS on an ancient PC to see if I could manage what I wanted to do.

Thanks again to iXsystems for this fantastic piece of software that is given to us.