Review Hardware setup for Storage and Containers

[numark1]

Hi Community, just want to check if my plan and hardware selection fits.

Currently I have a synology NAS running which is providing storage for Plex Library and a bunch of data (nothing fancy) and a Lenovo P330 used for around 30 docker containers. My Idea is to create a raidz1 pool with the 3 HDDs for the plex library and set up a 1TB ssd cache drive. Then create another raidz1 pool with 3 SSDs for everything else. To get everything running in one place I want to create 1 virtual machine to host my docker containers accessing the data on the SSDs.

Current Setup:
- Synology DS414 with 4x 8TB WD Red as Storage System
- Lenovo P330 as Docker System

Intended TrueNAS Scale System:
- N5105 Motherboard with 4x Intel i226-V 2.5G NICs
- 32G of SO-DIMMs
- 3x 18TB HDDs as Plex Storage
- 3x 2TB Crucial MX500 SSDs for everything else
- 1x M.2 SSD as Operating System Disk
- 1x M.2 SSD as Cache Drive for HDD Pool
- power supply will be a 500W currently on sale

So at all not a super special system or any high performance needs. I just want to separate HDDs from SSDs to send spinning disks to sleep because plex library isnt used that often. Regarding containers and the VM, as far as I know there is no docker/docker-compose direct support and only helm charts via kubernetes is offered ?

 

[numark1]

One thing I forgot, this built is heavily influenced by Wolfgangs Video from here: https://youtu.be/wwsgCkbogMM?si=Nr9E2EksO-xep6Ow

 

[ChrisRJ]

The TrueNAS builds from this channel should be taken with a grain of salt in my opinion. They are not as bad as those from other channels. But they often lack, at least for my taste, some level of resilience/reliability. After all, you get entertainment rather than professional build instructions. The latter is absolutely fine, as long as people are aware of it. But that is a different discussion ...

ZFS does not have a read cache as such. Please read up on L2ARC and what use-cases it actually helps with.

Also, I recommend to read up on ZFS and TrueNAS. In my signature you find a lot of links under "Recommended readings".

 

[NugentS]

My 2p worth
As @ChrisRJ says - cache (L2ARC) isn't what most peorple think it is - and its unlikley to have much effect. Run the pool without it for a few weeks and then check your ARC Hit Rate. If that > 90% then L2ARC won't help. One school of thought says you haven't enough ARC to properly run an L2ARC anyhow - in particular under Scale and even more importantly 1TB L2ARC on 32GB is too much. Its more likley to slow things down than speed them up.

MX500's - I have had interesting times with these. The firmware is buggy / has a bug that generates an error when used with TrueNAS. YMMV - but I would use something else if possible.

I personally would boot from SATA and keep the dual M.2 (assuming they are full X4 NVMe) for a fast pool.

I imagine that the memory is not ECC. Not a show stopper - but ECC is a good box to tick.

 

[MrGuvernment]

I will 3rd what was said, that L2ARC is a waste and likely wont be needed, with TrueNAS, more physical RAM is the #1 thing you should add before considering L2ARC, always.

Also, even with ZFS, 3 x 18TB drives, if one of those dies and has to be rebuilt, how long will that take....vs 4 drives in a mirror?