Repurpose old desktop as TrueNas Server - Hardware and setup thoughts?

[bigdonk]

I have spent the last few weeks reading posts and am ready to get some opinions. I am new to server setup, but fairly computer savvy.

I am only using this in a small Home Network (2-3 desktops, occasional laptop/chromebooks) and I am sick of slow transfer speeds and no redundancy.

I would like to repurpose an old desktop I have and would like to get thoughts on its hardware.

• ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Mobo (Only 4 sata3 connections)
• Intel i7-3770k
• 32gb ram
• OCZ 256gb SSD
• OCZ Fatal1ty 750w Power Supply
• Full Tower with Fan Cooling
• Server will be stored in a 62-65°F room and server noise shouldn't be a concern.

Use:

• Just being used as a Home Server. I have a plex server that runs off a desktop and I plan on leaving it there as it has multiple internal tuner cards. The plex media will be stored on the server. Currently about 3tb of data which will most likely double quickly if I have the space.
• Want to store library folders for all users. I originally thought this was large, but it turns out it will end up being well less than 1tb.
• I wanted to have a few tb reserved for some pics and videos all though we currently have those stored for free in the cloud.
• I am a little undecided on CORE vs SCALE as I have recently toyed with containers, but was leaning CORE.

If I were to run (4) 8gb drives (Seagate IronWolf), should I add a controller as the other 4 ports are Sata2?
With my currently low space needs, is 4 drives too many. The 8gb is currently the best bang for my buck on prime day right now.
I wouldn't mind adding another drive to use for jails which is also new to me. Maybe I am better using containers instead and going SCALE?
Thoughts on drive configurations?

I need to learn more on jails/containers as I could see myself using them as I occasionally mess with virtual machines and it seems like these would be much better served than VMs.

Thanks for any thoughts/advice,
Don

 

[edge-case]

You can never have too much storage! ;-)
In all seriousness, if you can comfortably afford the four 8TB drives, I'd say go for it... and don't forget ZFS recommends usage below 80% capacity, and also you'll lose a significant chunk of your raw capacity when you set up the ZFS VDEVs...

You need to decide the layout / capacity. i.e. you could do Z1, Z2 or mirrored VDEVs.
For this type of deployment (i.e simple home server), I personally normally go with a pair of mirrored VDEVs...
Benefits:
- easy in-place upgrade - just add more VDEVs in future without re-formatting or losing data
- (much) faster rebuilds if a drive fails (and/or you want to methodically replace/increase individual drive capacity)
- better redundancy vs Z1
Downfall: with 4 drives, you [obviously) only get 50% usable capacity of the raw capacity (versus 75% for Z1)

SATA / HBA: For my self built setups, I normally go with 8-port LSI-92XX HBAs from Ebay (flashed for JBOD).

CORE versus SCALE:
- I don't have a recommendation either way... ultimately, IMHO, if your hardware supports both, then for a simple home server it doesn't matter....
- I use CORE for the servers I still use daily (but built years ago with FreeNAS), and have slowly updated the software to TrueNAS CORE 13 (see the two builds in my signature below...)
- for more recent deployments (for myself and others), I've used Scale... (mostly for convenience with modern hardware, and to try it out, and because that's where the wind seems to be blowing... i.e IMHO, reading the tea-leaves, it appears that Scale is the future - and the VM and container support is much better on SCALE vs CORE (but I use Proxmox for that, and TrueNAS XXX just for ZFS/NAS...)

Other notes:
- Make sure the drives you are purchasing are CMR, not SMR
- I'd also recommend that you purchase drives from at least 2 vendors (e.g. WD Red Pro and Seagate IronWolf) and when I do mirrored pairs, I mix the vendors in each pair...
- you have lots of RAM (good), but don't have ECC RAM (bad, but how bad depends on your personal opinion / the criticality of the data , etc..)

Most importantly, don't forget the old adage "RAID is not a backup"...
... so if any data is important (and/or not backed up somewhere else), make sure you put plan(s) in place for on-site and, ideally, off-site backup too... For the critical data, I generally use a second, self-built, lower spec ZFS NAS for on-site, and then push an even smaller subset of the data to one of the cloud backup providers...

Finally, once you get this running, you'll want faster networking, and that's a whole new rabbit-hole to discover... again, IMHO experience, eBay and server liquidators are your friend...

 

[elvisimprsntr]

ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Mobo

This may be a problem.

ASRock > Z77 Extreme4

Premium Gold Caps; Digi Power Design, 8 + 4 Power Phase Design; Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2800+(OC); 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™, CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA Quad SLI™, SLI™; PCIE Gigabit LAN; Supports Intel HD Graphics with Built-in Visuals; Graphics Output Options : DVI-D, D-Sub...

www.asrock.com

- 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors by Intel® Z77, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10
- 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ

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

This is relevant to FreeNAS and TrueNAS CORE. Some parts of it might also be relevant to Scale, but I don't really know how reliable the Linux drivers are. 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...

www.truenas.com

 

[ChrisRJ]

The overall question IMHO is whether or not you are willing to invest a significant amount of time (probably a couple of man weeks) to learn ZFS and the relevant server/storage things. ZFS is very(!) different from other file systems and even someone with 20 years of professional experience in the server world will need to spend considerable time.

I don't want to scare you! But TrueNAS/ZFS are meant for mission-critical storage in an enterprise context. That comes with complexity. And, unfortunately, there is lot of crap content on YouTube about TrueNAS. With very few exceptions people make entertainment videos, that pose as thoughtful advice. But they are not. They put your data in jeopardy and almost guarantee frustration in one way or another. So whenever you see a video that tells you how easy it is to set up a server with TrueNAS, you should run.

Again, TrueNAS and ZFS are great things. If they fit your requirements and willingness to spend time, you get a solution that is comparable to proprietary solution that cost millions. If you want something quick and easy, you will be better off with e.g. Synology.

Hope that helps.

 

[bigdonk]

This may be a problem.

ASRock > Z77 Extreme4

Premium Gold Caps; Digi Power Design, 8 + 4 Power Phase Design; Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2800+(OC); 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™, CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA Quad SLI™, SLI™; PCIE Gigabit LAN; Supports Intel HD Graphics with Built-in Visuals; Graphics Output Options : DVI-D, D-Sub...

www.asrock.com

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

This is relevant to FreeNAS and TrueNAS CORE. Some parts of it might also be relevant to Scale, but I don't really know how reliable the Linux drivers are. 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...

www.truenas.com

Yeah, I found that as well. Seems a controller is needed.

 

[bigdonk]

The overall question IMHO is whether or not you are willing to invest a significant amount of time (probably a couple of man weeks) to learn ZFS and the relevant server/storage things. ZFS is very(!) different from other file systems and even someone with 20 years of professional experience in the server world will need to spend considerable time.

I don't want to scare you! But TrueNAS/ZFS are meant for mission-critical storage in an enterprise context. That comes with complexity. And, unfortunately, there is lot of crap content on YouTube about TrueNAS. With very few exceptions people make entertainment videos, that pose as thoughtful advice. But they are not. They put your data in jeopardy and almost guarantee frustration in one way or another. So whenever you see a video that tells you how easy it is to set up a server with TrueNAS, you should run.

Again, TrueNAS and ZFS are great things. If they fit your requirements and willingness to spend time, you get a solution that is comparable to proprietary solution that cost millions. If you want something quick and easy, you will be better off with e.g. Synology.

Hope that helps.

I am going to have to take the time to start learning ZFS. I like to learn as I go for better or worse. I like to get my hands dirty and learn as much as I can. Not a fan of buying a Synology or such as I don't learn anything in the process. Just like buying a computer, there is so much more to be learned building it yourself. I am thinking ZFS is way more then I need, but that's today and tomorrow will bring a whole bunch of new problems that hopefully knowledge will help solve.

 

[bigdonk]

You can never have too much storage! ;-)
In all seriousness, if you can comfortably afford the four 8TB drives, I'd say go for it... and don't forget ZFS recommends usage below 80% capacity, and also you'll lose a significant chunk of your raw capacity when you set up the ZFS VDEVs...

You need to decide the layout / capacity. i.e. you could do Z1, Z2 or mirrored VDEVs.
For this type of deployment (i.e simple home server), I personally normally go with a pair of mirrored VDEVs...
Benefits:
- easy in-place upgrade - just add more VDEVs in future without re-formatting or losing data
- (much) faster rebuilds if a drive fails (and/or you want to methodically replace/increase individual drive capacity)
- better redundancy vs Z1
Downfall: with 4 drives, you [obviously) only get 50% usable capacity of the raw capacity (versus 75% for Z1)

SATA / HBA: For my self built setups, I normally go with 8-port LSI-92XX HBAs from Ebay (flashed for JBOD).

CORE versus SCALE:
- I don't have a recommendation either way... ultimately, IMHO, if your hardware supports both, then for a simple home server it doesn't matter....
- I use CORE for the servers I still use daily (but built years ago with FreeNAS), and have slowly updated the software to TrueNAS CORE 13 (see the two builds in my signature below...)
- for more recent deployments (for myself and others), I've used Scale... (mostly for convenience with modern hardware, and to try it out, and because that's where the wind seems to be blowing... i.e IMHO, reading the tea-leaves, it appears that Scale is the future - and the VM and container support is much better on SCALE vs CORE (but I use Proxmox for that, and TrueNAS XXX just for ZFS/NAS...)

Other notes:
- Make sure the drives you are purchasing are CMR, not SMR
- I'd also recommend that you purchase drives from at least 2 vendors (e.g. WD Red Pro and Seagate IronWolf) and when I do mirrored pairs, I mix the vendors in each pair...
- you have lots of RAM (good), but don't have ECC RAM (bad, but how bad depends on your personal opinion / the criticality of the data , etc..)

Most importantly, don't forget the old adage "RAID is not a backup"...
... so if any data is important (and/or not backed up somewhere else), make sure you put plan(s) in place for on-site and, ideally, off-site backup too... For the critical data, I generally use a second, self-built, lower spec ZFS NAS for on-site, and then push an even smaller subset of the data to one of the cloud backup providers...

Finally, once you get this running, you'll want faster networking, and that's a whole new rabbit-hole to discover... again, IMHO experience, eBay and server liquidators are your friend...

Thanks for all the information. I had settled on the (4) 8tb drives as Amazon has the Seagate IronWolf for $129.99 currently for prime day and that is the best price/tb range atm.

The mirrored VDEVs sound like the best approach for me due to the reasons listed. The 50% isn't desired, but makes sense for me.

Seems like adding the controller makes a lot of sense, especially for down the road.

I had the same thought reading on CORE vs SCALE as to it looking like SCALE is more likely to be the path moving forward.

Drives are CMR. As far as the different vendors, the 8tb WD Red Pro are still $200, so I would be leaning towards 4 identical Seagate.

I had already started looking into faster networking before I decided on entertaining a server setup...lol!

 

[bigdonk]

The overall question IMHO is whether or not you are willing to invest a significant amount of time (probably a couple of man weeks) to learn ZFS and the relevant server/storage things. ZFS is very(!) different from other file systems and even someone with 20 years of professional experience in the server world will need to spend considerable time.

I don't want to scare you! But TrueNAS/ZFS are meant for mission-critical storage in an enterprise context. That comes with complexity. And, unfortunately, there is lot of crap content on YouTube about TrueNAS. With very few exceptions people make entertainment videos, that pose as thoughtful advice. But they are not. They put your data in jeopardy and almost guarantee frustration in one way or another. So whenever you see a video that tells you how easy it is to set up a server with TrueNAS, you should run.

Again, TrueNAS and ZFS are great things. If they fit your requirements and willingness to spend time, you get a solution that is comparable to proprietary solution that cost millions. If you want something quick and easy, you will be better off with e.g. Synology.

Hope that helps.

I have been reading the info linked in your signature and am quickly changing my whole thought process. No point in doing this with my old machine due to the memory alone. I am going to have to start fresh or maybe a used server. I've also settled on SCALE. I'll continue more reading later. Kids and the dog need some attention...LoL!

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Go for a used server, though they can in some cases be a little loud unless you change out the fans. For not much money you'll get a whole lot of server.

 

[edge-case]

I have been reading the info linked in your signature and am quickly changing my whole thought process. No point in doing this with my old machine due to the memory alone. I am going to have to start fresh or maybe a used server. I've also settled on SCALE. I'll continue more reading later. Kids and the dog need some attention...LoL!

I'd say do both, over time, and finances permitting; i.e. get yourself the drives and a used HBA now, and use your existing machine as a test bed to set up, try and out, modify, try-again, etc... without putting any critical data on it that you don't have backups of...

After a few weeks/months of experimenting, when you have a better idea of what you want, how much money in total you want to spend, and have gained lots of experience and knowledge of TrueNAS and ZFS, start looking for a better system (whether it be a used server or self-built), or simply decide that what you have is "good enough".
At that point, you can then decide whether to copy the data to your new machine, and use the old one as a backup / test machine, or move the boot and data drives themselves and retire your old machine...

 

[ChrisRJ]

i.e. get yourself the drives and a used HBA now

An HBA is only needed if the number of SATA ports on the motherboard are insufficient. There are server boards around that have 10+ ports, so most people would not need an additional HBA in that case. Plus, the latter requires cooling and uses a relatively high amount of power.

 

[bigdonk]

I'd say do both, over time, and finances permitting; i.e. get yourself the drives and a used HBA now, and use your existing machine as a test bed to set up, try and out, modify, try-again, etc... without putting any critical data on it that you don't have backups of...

After a few weeks/months of experimenting, when you have a better idea of what you want, how much money in total you want to spend, and have gained lots of experience and knowledge of TrueNAS and ZFS, start looking for a better system (whether it be a used server or self-built), or simply decide that what you have is "good enough".
At that point, you can then decide whether to copy the data to your new machine, and use the old one as a backup / test machine, or move the boot and data drives themselves and retire your old machine...

I am constantly changing my notes on thoughts/choices every time I read more...

I like the idea of playing with what I have as a test machine just to get my feet wet and not keep anything critical on it at the moment. Not that I have that much critical data, more or less things that would just suck to lose. The so called critical stuff is small enough that it is backed up in the cloud. This whole endeavor is purely convenience and timeframe is not a big deal so I can play around awhile.

So this begs the next step as I am continuing to read on.

The controller and drives. NOTE: Speed and redundancy is my main focus. I literally hate transferring large files watching windows transfer speeds that take forever. I am under the belief that going this route will tremendously help with that. The storage isn't going to be a major factor in decisions at this time. I have been easily surviving on 5tb for years now. Even if I only had 10tb useable I am sure I would be fine for many years as I somewhat routinely purge stuff I no longer need whenever possible. Obviously if you have more space you will use it, but my original 16tb of storage space I was planning on would be a ton for me. Having a drive or 2 on the virtual side is something that interest me very much, but lets not get ahead of myself.

1. What are the thoughts between SATA, SAS 6Gb/s and 12Gb/s for my situation?
   1. Is there enough benefit to the additional costs of SAS for a home server that is primarily used for file storage.
   2. Same question for 6Gb/s vs 12Gb/s?
   3. This is going to get me into another question I probably don't want to start yet as far as a faster network, but I am curious if the drive choice would be different if I upgraded from a gigabit network. I did some looking into my cabling and I have 550mhz CAT6 throughout the house. It is just amazon bought patch cable from CableMatters. Curious if it will support faster network as advertised. I ran all these when I centralized my router in the dead center of the house and ran all new cables to the drops I wanted.
   4. I am beginning to think there will be some virtual environments as well since AI love playing around with things, but that will be for another day. I will save the jail/container questions for when I have more time to read up on them.
2. Where do you buy your SAS drives from?
3. The above will most likely answer the controller question. If I end up going SATA on my test machine, I will bypass adding a a controller and just start with a 2 drive mirror allowing me to use the existing Mobo SATA 0 & 1.

I can end this with a most likely looming question on how much I want to spend. I typically settle in the buy right before the large price jumps. I can definitely afford to splurge, but try to stay in the what I call "new tech that isn't brand new tech world" and if it makes sense for what I am trying to accomplish. No reason to overspend for minor gains.

 

[edge-case]

An HBA is only needed if the number of SATA ports on the motherboard are insufficient. There are server boards around that have 10+ ports, so most people would not need an additional HBA in that case. Plus, the latter requires cooling and uses a relatively high amount of power.

I don't disagree with your points, and I have 2 machines where I utilize the motherboard SATA ports for the data drives, but if I have a free PCIE x4 slot I normally go for an LSI 92xx HBA; I normally have created decent airflow for the HDDs and 10 GbE NICs, so have never had an issue with "hot" HBAs...

- they support up to 8 drives, and SAS. (so easy to move existing setup another machine with less than 10 SATA ports)
- they are well supported by TrueNAS - his older motherboard might not, especially is he choices CORE
- and who knows how many PCIE lanes the motherboard chipset is allocating to the onboard SATA ports (if there's 10+ of them).
- They are less than $40 UDS on Ebay including 8 cables.
- [ you can easily pass them through if you virtualize ]

I do normally use the motherboard SATA ports for a mirrored pair of cheap 128/256 GB 2.5" SATA SSDs... (you can normally get those new for <$20 each from Newegg/Bestbuy/Amazon).

 

[edge-case]

I am constantly changing my notes on thoughts/choices every time I read more...

I like the idea of playing with what I have as a test machine just to get my feet wet and not keep anything critical on it at the moment. Not that I have that much critical data, more or less things that would just suck to lose. The so called critical stuff is small enough that it is backed up in the cloud. This whole endeavor is purely convenience and timeframe is not a big deal so I can play around awhile.

So this begs the next step as I am continuing to read on.

The controller and drives. NOTE: Speed and redundancy is my main focus. I literally hate transferring large files watching windows transfer speeds that take forever. I am under the belief that going this route will tremendously help with that. The storage isn't going to be a major factor in decisions at this time. I have been easily surviving on 5tb for years now. Even if I only had 10tb useable I am sure I would be fine for many years as I somewhat routinely purge stuff I no longer need whenever possible. Obviously if you have more space you will use it, but my original 16tb of storage space I was planning on would be a ton for me. Having a drive or 2 on the virtual side is something that interest me very much, but lets not get ahead of myself.

1. What are the thoughts between SATA, SAS 6Gb/s and 12Gb/s for my situation?
   1. Is there enough benefit to the additional costs of SAS for a home server that is primarily used for file storage.
   2. Same question for 6Gb/s vs 12Gb/s?
   3. This is going to get me into another question I probably don't want to start yet as far as a faster network, but I am curious if the drive choice would be different if I upgraded from a gigabit network. I did some looking into my cabling and I have 550mhz CAT6 throughout the house. It is just amazon bought patch cable from CableMatters. Curious if it will support faster network as advertised. I ran all these when I centralized my router in the dead center of the house and ran all new cables to the drops I wanted.
   4. I am beginning to think there will be some virtual environments as well since AI love playing around with things, but that will be for another day. I will save the jail/container questions for when I have more time to read up on them.
2. Where do you buy your SAS drives from?
3. The above will most likely answer the controller question. If I end up going SATA on my test machine, I will bypass adding a a controller and just start with a 2 drive mirror allowing me to use the existing Mobo SATA 0 & 1.

I can end this with a most likely looming question on how much I want to spend. I typically settle in the buy right before the large price jumps. I can definitely afford to splurge, but try to stay in the what I call "new tech that isn't brand new tech world" and if it makes sense for what I am trying to accomplish. No reason to overspend for minor gains.

My main advice is just go slow.
This is a long, fun adventure, but you want to spread out the fun (and pain..). IMHO, you'll lean a lot as you go, and will have a much better idea of what you want to buy - and why - as you gain experience over time.. and won't have to regret purchases you made too soon...
That's why I recommend playing with your existing hardware (which you know well) with a new OS and filesystem before going all in on a lot of new (to you) [server] hardware.....

In terms of SAS versus SATA, again IMHO, for your use case SATA (6 Gbs) is more than fine, and no need for SAS.. With the potential use cases you've described, and with a 2 or 4 disks (in 2 disk mirrored VDEVs), your HDDs will easily saturate 1 GbE and likely 2.5 GbE... so no need to worry about that until you're client<->NAS networking is 10 GbE...

ChrisRJ makes valid points above about HBAs, but I'd still recommend purchasing an HBA - for ~$35 on Ebay - even if just as a backup, e.g. in case you experience issues with the motherboard SATA ports.. it's always nice to have extra parts/options for troubleshooting issues when they arise...
To that point, I'd spend a few extra dollars on a few cheap SATA SSDs for your boot drives and testing, and extra SATA cables (again for troubleshooting).

(I've only ever purchased SAS once (and that was because I got a crazy-good-deal on (12 GB capacity) Seagate SAS drives from CDW where they were the same price as the equivalent SATA drives)..

 

[ChrisRJ]

The 12 Gbps of SAS are of no practical value for conventional drives. Under optimal (i.e. barely realistic) conditions they might saturate a 3 Gbps SATA2 interface (like I have in my system). But the max. speeds of HDDs are listed for sequential operation, which is often not what we see in real live. Unless we are talking about redundant paths, external disk shelves, SAS expanders and things like that SATA is absolutely ok for a homelab.

 

[bigdonk]

Quick question.

What would the performance differences be between 4x8Gb mirrored pairs and 8x4Gb mirrored pairs?

I'm reading away and burning some brain cells. If I buy an 8 port controller, I would have the ports to accomplish. Other then maybe heat what would be the negatives?

The only difference in the drives using WD Red Plus as an example is the rpm 5400 vs 7200.

 

[edge-case]

Quick question.

What would the performance differences be between 4x8Gb mirrored pairs and 8x4Gb mirrored pairs?

I'm reading away and burning some brain cells. If I buy an 8 port controller, I would have the ports to accomplish. Other then maybe heat what would be the negatives?

The only difference in the drives using WD Red Plus as an example is the rpm 5400 vs 7200.

Using mirrored VDEVs, everything tells me that you're much better off with four 8 TB drives, rather than eight 4 TB drives....
- the performance difference - especially given your workload and network constraints - will be negligible
4 drives offers:
- much better short-term upgrade path... i.e. to increase capacity by another 50%, add two 8 TB drives, and to double capacity add four...
(compare with situation of eight 4 TB drives, where you'd have to purchase eight new drives to double the capacity)
- half the noise, heat and power usage, and half the physical space...
- half the potential probability of drive failure
- having free [SATA] ports is useful for testing, hot spares, adding extra drives, etc..

For improved performance (or avoiding reduced performance), the best thing you can do is throw as much disk space and RAM at it as you can reasonably afford... see this resource for the impact of free space / % age utilization on performance...

 

[NickF]

You know...
This is going to be an uncommon opinion here, apparently.
Keep your existing stuff. Don't buy a server today.

Buy a supported NIC

Intel I210-T1 | eBay

Find great deals on eBay for Intel I210-T1 . Shop with confidence.

www.ebay.com

and HBA, literally any of these will work, and I recommend this seller:

Security Measure

www.ebay.com

Spend less than $100 all in to get it prepped. A barebones server is going to cost 3-6 times that much for similar or even older generation stuff.

Try TrueNAS out. See if you like it. Then maybe consider something else as an upgrade done right later.

Also FWIW, for a new user for a home server? Try SCALE, all day long that's my recommendation. But play with VMs instead.

I also ABSOLUTELY recommend new users with smaller systems to use mirrors. Buy two drives at a time and expand as you go. You get good speed, good redundancy, and you can find 10TB drives for under $100. RAIDZ expansion is going to be here for at least another 18 months at my estimation. https://youtu.be/2p32m-7FNpM?t=27

 

[edge-case]

You know...
This is going to be an uncommon opinion here, apparently.
Keep your existing stuff. Don't buy a server today.

Buy a supported NIC

Intel I210-T1 | eBay

Find great deals on eBay for Intel I210-T1 . Shop with confidence.

www.ebay.com

and HBA, literally any of these will work, and I recommend this seller:

Security Measure

www.ebay.com

Spend less than $100 all in to get it prepped. A barebones server is going to cost 3-6 times that much for similar or even older generation stuff.

Try TrueNAS out. See if you like it. Then maybe consider something else as an upgrade done right later.
….

That’s what I’ve been saying..or at least trying to. ;-)

 

[bigdonk]

You know...
This is going to be an uncommon opinion here, apparently.
Keep your existing stuff. Don't buy a server today.

Buy a supported NIC

Intel I210-T1 | eBay

Find great deals on eBay for Intel I210-T1 . Shop with confidence.

www.ebay.com

and HBA, literally any of these will work, and I recommend this seller:

Security Measure

www.ebay.com

Spend less than $100 all in to get it prepped. A barebones server is going to cost 3-6 times that much for similar or even older generation stuff.

Try TrueNAS out. See if you like it. Then maybe consider something else as an upgrade done right later.

Also FWIW, for a new user for a home server? Try SCALE, all day long that's my recommendation. But play with VMs instead.

I also ABSOLUTELY recommend new users with smaller systems to use mirrors. Buy two drives at a time and expand as you go. You get good speed, good redundancy, and you can find 10TB drives for under $100. RAIDZ expansion is going to be here for at least another 18 months at my estimation. https://youtu.be/2p32m-7FNpM?t=27

That's my plan of approach for the most part. I am going to use what I have and just add 2 - 8tb drives in a mirror to play around with at the moment. I can then add additional drives like stated and look into buying a used server when I am more familiar.

If I am going to buy a NIC card I would prefer to buy something faster. I only have 3-4 PCs/Server that would require them. Of course, I am sure that would lend to other purchases as far as switch(s) and router. Haven't done any research on that side as of yet, but if I am buying any components I want to look a little further down the road.

Feel free to link me some info on fast network information and save me from having to look when I am ready to start reading up!

Same goes for the HBA. I shouldn't need one yet as I am only going to run the 2 drives along with the SSD. Once I get familiar and am ready to add more drives I can grab an HBA.

I have decided on starting with SCALE. I have been playing more and more with Linux lately and I have always wanted to make the jump to understand it.