Scale vs core?

[Pasha_man]

let's start from the beginning, I am thinking of making a NAS to store ALL my files and data. which can also be used as a Plex/jellyfin server. now I know that much that ZFS is a file system the same as NTFS for Windows. working may be different but that's the dumbed-down example I can comprehend. I have seen a lot of good reviews about Synology. good premium product but that's not available in my country easily so have to go with DIY. The 3 things I like about Synology are the Hot-swappable drives, the expandable storage pool while keeping the raid, the mixing of different size drives, and lastly the easy-to-use app and its library. so with that knowledge and roadmap. What OS would suit me? like how Synology has its GUI and app library, does Truenas have something similar? Can I mix different size drives and expand my pool? can I Truly hot-swap them? which one has GPU support? Which one, scale or core, will be like a 'hypothetical' drop-in substitute to the Synology Diskstation manager?
Which fundamental things should I be clear on so I don't do in the wrong direction? is there any documentation that I should read? any guides? any tutorials?

 

[sretalla]

If you're so keen on Synology and just can't get the hardware, why not run Open Xpenology? https://xpenology.org/

ZFS is great for a number of reasons, but doesn't allow some of the flexibility afforded to other filesystems around adding drives and mixing sizes.

TrueNAS SCALE has a huge variety of available apps via the official, community and TrueCharts catalogs, but you need to involve ZFS, so won't get all the rest of what you're asking about.

 

[joeschmuck]

why not run Open Xpenology? https://xpenology.org/

Interesting, I've never heard of that before. I just read the web page and think I will test it out in a VM. I have a Supermicro Server I could use if I like it and want to really test it out. Even if this turns out to be a great little project, I know I will remain with TrueNAS for my main server, I have a great deal of trust in it.

 

[danb35]

• Hot-swappable drives are a matter of your hardware--both versions of TrueNAS support them just fine, as long as your hardware does.
• If you want a point-and-click app library, SCALE will be a much better fit for you than CORE--the latter has plugins, but you shouldn't use them, as they're very poorly (if at all) maintained.
• You can put disks of varying sizes into a vdev (a RAID set), but its capacity will be controlled by the smallest disk. Thus, a mirror consisting of a 4 TB and a 6 TB disk will have a capacity of 4 TB. A RAIDZ1 (similar to RAID5) vdev consisting of disks of 2 TB, 4 TB, and 6 TB will have a net capacity of 4 TB.
• You can expand pools by adding vdevs, and by replacing disks in an existing vdev with larger ones. You cannot add disks to a vdev. So if you have a three-disk RAIDZ1 vdev, you cannot turn it into a four-disk vdev.

 

[Pasha_man]

• Hot-swappable drives are a matter of your hardware--both versions of TrueNAS support them just fine, as long as your hardware does.
• If you want a point-and-click app library, SCALE will be a much better fit for you than CORE--the latter has plugins, but you shouldn't use them, as they're very poorly (if at all) maintained.
• You can put disks of varying sizes into a vdev (a RAID set), but its capacity will be controlled by the smallest disk. Thus, a mirror consisting of a 4 TB and a 6 TB disk will have a capacity of 4 TB. A RAIDZ1 (similar to RAID5) vdev consisting of disks of 2 TB, 4 TB, and 6 TB will have a net capacity of 4 TB.
• You can expand pools by adding vdevs, and by replacing disks in an existing vdev with larger ones. You cannot add disks to a vdev. So if you have a three-disk RAIDZ1 vdev, you cannot turn it into a four-disk vdev.

could you explain a little about how hot-swappable drives depend on the hardware? isn't this process software dependent?
how will replacing the disks in an existing vdev increase size? will it use the parity drive to rebuild all the data?

and if I wanted to make a 3-disk Raidz1 into 4 disk RaidZ1, will i need to delete the existing vdev and make a new one on top of it?

for transcoding, what is the community-recommended hardware? An intel CPU with intel ires iGPU or the AMD g series (4600G, 5700G, etc) or get a GPU to do all the transcoding. if the GPU then team green or team red?

 

[Pasha_man]

for transcoding, what is the community-recommended hardware? An intel CPU with intel iris iGPU or the AMD g series APU (4600G, 5700G, etc) or get a GPU to do all the transcoding. if the GPU then team green or team red?

 

[danb35]

could you explain a little about how hot-swappable drives depend on the hardware?

I'm not sure what more to explain--the hardware needs to support hot-swap.

isn't this process software dependent?

The software also needs to support hot-swap--all versions of TrueNAS do.

how will replacing the disks in an existing vdev increase size? will it use the parity drive to rebuild all the data?

There is no "parity drive" in any ZFS configuration. But other than that, I don't think I understand the question--bigger disks in a vdev means more capacity for the vdev.

and if I wanted to make a 3-disk Raidz1 into 4 disk RaidZ1, will i need to delete the existing vdev and make a new one on top of it?

I'm not sure what you mean by "on top of it", but yes, you'd need to destroy the current vdev and create a new one.

 

[jgreco]

could you explain a little about how hot-swappable drives depend on the hardware?

Lots of low end hardware does not have the support for hot swapping drives, which requires the controller to recognize that one drive has been removed and another has then been inserted.

isn't this process software dependent?

No. It requires the hardware support. Of course, if your software doesn't support it, then it does not matter if the hardware supports it.

how will replacing the disks in an existing vdev increase size?

You can replace, for example, six 1TB disks (4TB vdev) in a RAIDZ2 with six 10TB disks, resilvering (rebuilding) one at a time. At the conclusion, you will be the proud owner of a 40TB vdev.

will it use the parity drive to rebuild all the data?

Yes, unless you have a way to hook up an additional (seventh in my example) disk, in which case it doesn't need the parity. Parity is stored as part of the data and is not located on any particular disk.

and if I wanted to make a 3-disk Raidz1 into 4 disk RaidZ1, will i need to delete the existing vdev and make a new one on top of it?

Once created, a RAIDZ vdev's width is not really expandable, though some work is being done on that.

for transcoding, what is the community-recommended hardware? An intel CPU with intel ires iGPU

Plex on Linux supports hardware transcoding using a GPU, but needs the QuickSync CPU support on FreeBSD. Other software packages vary. Figure out what your transcoding requirements are and buy accordingly. Something like the Intel E-2388G is extremely flexible.