One SSD enough for my needs ?

[raphaelben]

Hello,

Coming from a Synology NAS, I would like to build a TrueNas Scale server but I have one interrogation.

Can I, with only one large NVME SSD, do all these things simultaneously :
- Booting TrueNas Scale
- Using it as a cache drive
- Installing docker containers on it. And if it's possible, running the container on the SSD but add data access to the HDD pool ?
- Installing on it one or two VMs

(I will have two HDD on raidz beside)

Thanks in advance

 

[jgreco]

Hello,

Coming from a Synology NAS, I would like to build a TrueNas Scale server but I have one interrogation.

Can I, with only one large NVME SSD, do all these things simultaneously :

No, this is not supported.

 

[danb35]

(I will have two HDD on raidz beside)

Any flavor of RAIDZ requires at least three disks (mirrors aren't RAIDZ; RAIDZ is parity RAID). But with respect to the SSD, you'd need at least three SSDs to do what you're talking about: 1 for the boot device, 1 for cache (though it's questionable whether you'd benefit from that), and 1 for the apps/VMs (assuming you aren't interested in redundancy for them).

 

[joeschmuck]

So you have your answers, basically you cannot do what you want using this minimal amount of hardware. Maybe if you state exactly what you want to have accomplished then someone could provide you a recommendation on how about to build it, at least the basics like how many drives (SSD and HDD), capacities, RAM size, etc... I personally don't like to recommend hardware that I haven't used myself but there are a few exceptions such as drives or RAM and there are many other people here with first hand experience with different hardware.

If you are looking to build a NAS on a very low budget, all you need to do is start reading these forums, because many people have tried to cut corners and they just have problems when trying to make it too cheap. Low cost is nice but quality components is a must. I understand that budget is a concern for everyone but don't put yourself through that nightmare and try to start off on a good foot.

There are a lot of forum posting on people asking about building advice. I recommend you read the postings for a few hours to get a sense of what is required, many will interest you, read the resources as well, there are some good topics there.

 

[raphaelben]

Thank you very much for these answers.
I'm not looking to build a low budget server and make cuts.
Just that in my case, I don't think I need much space on the SSD for running docker/cache and occasional VM, so I much prefer having just one large SSD than 3 smaller SSDs.
Maybe Unraid is a bit more flexible in that regard, I'll have to weight the pros and the cons.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm not looking to build a low budget server and make cuts.
Just that in my case, I don't think I need much space on the SSD for running docker/cache and occasional VM, so I much prefer having just one large SSD than 3 smaller SSDs.

You can run a single SSD as a data drive if you really want, it would be a one drive stripe. Of course it's not recommended because we generally are looking for redundancy with TrueNAS. And you would need a boot drive also which can be another small SSD (preferred) or a USB Flash drive (not preferred).

 

[danb35]

I much prefer having just one large SSD than 3 smaller SSDs.

Again, there's no reason for a cache SSD--if your storage is on SSD anyway, what benefit do you think you're going to get from putting cache on any SSD (much less the same SSD)? So that takes your requirements down to two. And they will not drop further:

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