Old Rig Specs for TrueNas

[ThatITNoob]

Hi everyone,

I have been reading through the forums and other sources to familiarize myself with TrueNAS.

I have an old rig that I would love to utilize as a NAS.
Definitely looking forward to an opinion discussion, thanks in advance for your help!

CPU: Ryzen 2700x.
MOBO: Crosshair Hero VII (Wi-Fi)
RAM: Need some help as I'm kind of confused with the specs for the Mobo. An extra pair of eyes would be nice.
PSU: EVGA 1000 G Gold 80 Plus
Hard Drives: (2) 12TB Drives, looking to add an additional 2 (12TB) Drives within the future.

Case: Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra (Potentially looking to expand my drive usage to fill all 10 slots that are available).

*I have two 1TB SSDs and may want to use one. Would this be necessary or overkill for the TrueNAS OS or is the proper way still USB?
If so, I can look for a smaller 120GB SSD.

*I'm a bit stuck looking for ECC RAM. Seems like it's a double-edged sword with AMD and ECC RAM and I'm not certain which RAM to look for or what not within the specs for my motherboard.

*Hard Drives will be ran in storage pools within TrueNAS, as I'm not sure which yet; still looking. Could I start with two drives and add two more to the storage pool without issues?

Memory info for motherboard:

4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 3600(O.C.)/3466(O.C.)/3400(O.C.)/3200(O.C.)/3000(O.C.)/2933(O.C.)/2800(O.C.)/2666/2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory *
4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 3400(O.C.)/3200(O.C.)/3000(O.C.)/2933(O.C.)/2800(O.C.)/2666/2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory *
AMD 7th Generation A-Series/Athlon X4 Processors
4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2400/2133 MHz Un-buffered Memory
AMD Ryzen™ 2nd Generation Processors
AMD Ryzen™ 2nd Generation/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics/ Athlon™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics/ Ryzen™ 1st Generation Processors
Dual Channel Memory Architecture


4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2400/2133 MHz Un-buffered Memory < to clarify, would I need a newer CPU for the ECC RAM or would I be able to locate the specific RAM and not have any issues?

 

[Arwen]

In general, you don't want to over-clock CPU, Memory or Graphics. Servers, (which a NAS is), work more reliably as stock components. Some of you memory specs list O.C., though you may not have intended to over-clock your memory.

I can't comment on the memory, ECC or specifics.

Yes, a 1TB SSD is overkill for the TrueNAS boot device. About 16GB is all that is needed, though I personally would go for 32GB, (or higher if it made sense). And while you can use USB, lots of cheap USB flash drives are sold everyday. Those produce e-waste within a year or so. Thus, the current recommendation is to use a real SSD, like one for SATA or even NVMe if you don't have any other need for a NVMe slot.


Starting with 2 x 12TB disks can be done, using ZFS Mirror. Then add a new vDev of another 2 x 12TB Mirror.

It is not great in someways, because you have very large disks, and potentially long replacement / resilver times. A 4 disk RAID-Z2 would be better, because you get the same amount of storage, yet can loose any 2 disks. Unlike 2, 2 disk Mirrors. If you loose both disks in a mirror pair, ZFS pool is gone and it is full restore time.

It is possible to convert a 2 disk Mirror pool, into a 4 disk RAID-Z2 pool. It is all manual effort. Not something I'd recommend to a new user.

 

[ThatITNoob]

In general, you don't want to over-clock CPU, Memory or Graphics. Servers, (which a NAS is), work more reliably as stock components. Some of you memory specs list O.C., though you may not have intended to over-clock your memory.

I can't comment on the memory, ECC or specifics.

Yes, a 1TB SSD is overkill for the TrueNAS boot device. About 16GB is all that is needed, though I personally would go for 32GB, (or higher if it made sense). And while you can use USB, lots of cheap USB flash drives are sold everyday. Those produce e-waste within a year or so. Thus, the current recommendation is to use a real SSD, like one for SATA or even NVMe if you don't have any other need for a NVMe slot.


Starting with 2 x 12TB disks can be done, using ZFS Mirror. Then add a new vDev of another 2 x 12TB Mirror.

It is not great in someways, because you have very large disks, and potentially long replacement / resilver times. A 4 disk RAID-Z2 would be better, because you get the same amount of storage, yet can loose any 2 disks. Unlike 2, 2 disk Mirrors. If you loose both disks in a mirror pair, ZFS pool is gone and it is full restore time.

It is possible to convert a 2 disk Mirror pool, into a 4 disk RAID-Z2 pool. It is all manual effort. Not something I'd recommend to a new user.

I will look into getting a NVMe or SSD for the build.

I'm going to continue browsing through the forum in the meantime for additional information.

Thanks Arwen.

 

[NugentS]

It is NOT possible to convert a 2 disk mirror, into a 4 disk RAID-Z2 Pool

 

[Etorix]

DDR4 UDIMM 2666 MHz (or faster) if what your motherboard wants. For ECC support (and actual use!), you'd need a suitable Intel motherboard ('C' or 'W' chipset), or one of the "server Ryzen" boards from AsRockRack (X470/X570/B550D4U).

For advice on pool layout, you have to explain your use case and storage needs.

 

[NugentS]

@ThatITNoob
You have 6 SATA Ports on that motherboard and 1 M.2 along with 2 PCIe 3X16 (1*16, or 2*8) which are useful plus some others that I can't be bothered to work out - but some may be useful.
You will need, in order to fill your case with drives a proper HBA and not a SATA expansion card - that will take up one good PCIe slot. The other will be taken up I guess with a GPU

 

[Etorix]

It is NOT possible to convert a 2 disk mirror, into a 4 disk RAID-Z2 Pool

Officially, or from the GUI, no.
Hacking your way through the CLI, one can break the mirror, create a degraded 4-wide raidz2 with two new drives and one drive from the mirror, replicate from the remaining mirror drive to the degraded raidz2 and finally add the last drive to the raidz2. Not advisable, but possible.

 

[NugentS]

Well every day is a school day. It not something I would consider doing

 

[Arwen]

Yes, @Etorix has described what I meant about converting a 2 disk Mirror into a 4 disk RAID-Z2. And, that it is all manual effort.

I'd consider it, if I had good backups and an actual need / desire.

 

[Etorix]

Well, with good backups one can just do a "backup-destroy-restore", which would be faster than the conversion procedure (no resilver).

Take up point for @ThatITNoob: One "hidden cost" of ZFS is that changing geometry is cumbersome, so one must make a good decision from the start, and then bring drives in sets of complete vdevs.
Going for mirrors gives most flexibility (bring 2-3 drives at a time), at the cost of space efficiency.
If going for raidz2/raidz3 for space efficiency, one must bring in drives by sets of N drives (vdev width, so N≥4).