Newbie | Used T330 Build Critique

[benfrey]

Hi everyone,

New TrueNas Core user here. PSU on my old 2009 Dell Studio XPS 435 MT desktop running Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS finally went out and am looking to expand. I have included details for my used T330 build and planned configuration below. Based on this configuration, I have two brief questions:

1. For my Pool A, what drives and pool configuration does anyone recommend to hit at least 500MB/s read/write when accessing the server on my local network?
2. I have heard of installing my TrueNas Core boot partition on the Poweredge’s Internal Dual SD Module with success [1]. Is this a viable solution, and if not, does anyone have any suggestions on where to mount a drive inside the T330 chassis?

Recently, I purchased the following components for a new TrueNas Core build:

Tower: Dell Poweredge T330 ($300)
CPU: Xeon E3-1230 V5 (included in tower purchase)
RAID Card: PERC H730 (included in tower purchase)
HDD: 5x 3TB Hitachi 7200RPM SAS 3.5” [hus723030ALs640] ($30/drive)
RAM: 2x 8GB Hyinx PC4-19200 UDIMM ECC ($43/stick)
SSD: ???
NVMe: ???

I plan to run the PERC in HBA mode. I have 8 3.5” drive slots to work with. Here is my planned pool configuration:

Pool A: 2-4x SSD or HDD? - I'm looking to spend =<$400 for 4TB-6TB storage capacity for media file access.
Pool B: 4x 3TB Hitachi drives in RAIDZ1 (9TB cap) - Used for overnight device backups (1x 2021 Mac, 2x desktop computers)

Other details: 1-2 users, prefer high reliability, and the server will be dedicated to file severing (no VMs). I am not opposed to initial setup complexity (i.e., using an NVMe drive for SLOG, L2ARC, etc.)

Thank you in advance and I apologize for my lack of understanding. I have read a few of the primers posted by jgreco (thank you!), but would like some build critique if it is not too much to ask.

Sincerely,
Ben

References:
[1] https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/installing-scale-onto-dell-internal-dual-sd-module.95259/

 

[jgreco]

I plan to run the PERC in HBA mode.

There's no such thing. Despite Dell desperately wanting the lobotomization of a RAID card to be "equal to" an HBA, it doesn't actually make it an HBA.

Please see

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

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