Server Upgrade - CORE or SCALE?

[danb35]

Scale is nice because of the Apps ecosystem, but has its downsides in not being able to have different IPs for the apps.

I don't have any interest in this, but I believe it can be accomplished using MetalLB.

The "killer app" in SCALE for me was TrueCharts' Traefik/ingress implementation. Install the app, give it a hostname, and the reverse proxy is all set up with TLS termination, all ready to go. The closest I can come to that under CORE is using Caddy--which is trivial to configure as a reverse proxy, but it still requires manually writing a Caddyfile entry for each reverse proxy. This is something I asked for something like eight years ago in FreeNAS, but iX has never had much apparent interest in implementing. The downside here is you're pretty well married to TrueCharts, and they haven't been very reluctant to implement breaking changes.

I have a moderately-hefty Proxmox cluster; all of this stuff could be implemented there--and with the Proxmox helper scripts, much of it could be very nearly as easy as installing an app. But performance of nzbget under Proxmox, saving to a NFS share on my NAS, is less than 5% of the performance of it running in an app on the NAS.

I’m not sure why all the hate on SCALE

It's not hate to observe that CORE is far more stable and performant as a storage platform--you know, as a NAS.

 

[jgreco]

I’m not sure why all the hate on SCALE at this point in the release cycle.

This is a technical forum. It's not hate, it's well substantiated disdain. I am perfectly able to say that ZFS is not the right product for every job; I have a number of iomega and Synology NAS units doing various duties in places where I just couldn't justify a big heavyweight NAS. In a head to head comparison between NAS services using ZFS on FreeBSD and ZFS on Linux, Linux loses. It lacks the kernel iSCSI stuff, the ARC memory stuff sucks, etc. People keep telling me the Kube stuff is nothing to write home about; I kinda have to trust that when I've heard it so many times. At some point I hope that SCALE will get better, and given the talent working on it, I expect that to happen. Still, BSD has a ten year lead.

 

[victort]

I don't have any interest in this, but I believe it can be accomplished using MetalLB.

The "killer app" in SCALE for me was TrueCharts' Traefik/ingress implementation. Install the app, give it a hostname, and the reverse proxy is all set up with TLS termination, all ready to go. The closest I can come to that under CORE is using Caddy--which is trivial to configure as a reverse proxy, but it still requires manually writing a Caddyfile entry for each reverse proxy. This is something I asked for something like eight years ago in FreeNAS, but iX has never had much apparent interest in implementing. The downside here is you're pretty well married to TrueCharts, and they haven't been very reluctant to implement breaking changes.

Valid point. Very valid.

I have a moderately-hefty Proxmox cluster; all of this stuff could be implemented there--and with the Proxmox helper scripts, much of it could be very nearly as easy as installing an app. But performance of nzbget under Proxmox, saving to a NFS share on my NAS, is less than 5% of the performance of it running in an app on the NAS.

It's not hate to observe that CORE is far more stable and performant as a storage platform--you know, as a NAS.

I suppose there will always be different motive and reasons for doing different things.

Personally I want to wait for Scale to become a bit more stable. Truecharts will also have to have a better track record before I move my 10+ users to the Scale version of Nextcloud. Then there are things like, “How do I install smbclient in Nextcloud on Scale?”

Best advice is, try both, then decide.

There are few things worse than not trying something and always thinking about if it would have been better than why you’re currently using.

Try it, experiment, then decide.

 

[danb35]

Then there are things like, “How do I install smbclient in Nextcloud on Scale?”

Yeah, that seems to be an intractable limitation of the apps ecosystem--you use the images as they come. If you need something different, there really doesn't seem to be a good way to change those images. I guess the so-called "Linux jails" could be a way around that, but then you're back to manually installing and configuring the software in question.

 

[unseen]

Well, getting my new server up and running was going well until I started getting "slow I/O" warnings followed by a complete lock up. Now the HBA card isn't even detected by the computer, never mind the the four pool disks.


Back to Amazon it goes...


I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I can find and flash IT firmware for the 2308 card that I ordered as a replacement and that TrueNAS can restore my pool to sanity once it gets a working card to talk to it with.

 

[unseen]

I'm happy to report that my new build is now working well after receiving a transplant of a second hand genuine LSI 9207-8i. Much to my surprise, I have no problem keeping the 7200 RPM disks cool. It obviously helps a lot that I have them spaced out with only two drives in each four bay enclosure, but a scrub hardly raised disk temperatures more than a few degrees C. When idle, the disks average at around 38°C and that's in the middle of the summer!

SilverStone seem to have taken on some of the criticism of the first version of the CS381 case. Each of the drive trays comes with a blanking plate which should be clicked into place if the tray is not used for a disk. The drive cages fit nice and tightly into the case so that air can't simply go around the drives. All my fans blow air out of the case and I made sure I sealed off all routes for air to enter the case without coming in through the front filter and the drive bays. There are four 120mm fans in total. Two push air through the AIO CPU cooler's radiator at the back of the case and two more push air out through the cut-outs in the top of the left side panel.

I think it turned out to be a nice build and the proxmox cluster sitting on top of the very sturdy CS381 case makes for a fairly capable data centre that's quiet enough to put up with in my living room.

 

[jgreco]

Much to my surprise, I have no problem keeping the 7200 RPM disks cool. It obviously helps a lot that I have them spaced out with only two drives in each four bay enclosure, but a scrub hardly raised disk temperatures more than a few degrees C.

This really shouldn't be a surprise. Many modern chassis attempt to cram as many disks into as little space as possible, which creates heat problems especially with 7200 RPM. One of the things I recommend for folks with a 24 bay Supermicro chassis who want to "quiet" it down is just to fill in drives in a 12 drive checkerboard pattern, and then you only need modest fans to keep them cool. It is the need for pressure differential that makes cooling difficult, noisy, and power hungry. It takes relatively little air to carry away excess heat. Drives are only dissipating maybe 10-15 watts.