Setup Check Before Making Final Purchases

[CosmicTemplar]

Greetings y'all,

I'm making my first DIY purpose-built server and wanted to make sure the config I'm thinking makes sense.

CPU: Intel Core i5 12600k
Motherboard: Gigabyte B760I AORUS PRO DDR4 Mini ITX LGA1700 Motherboard
GPU: None
RAM: 2x8 GB 3200 Crucial Ballistix Sport LT sticks
Storage: 2xWD SN770 500gb drives; 2x4tb iron wolf 5900rpm drives;
Case: Cooler Master NR200(acquired on sale)


I have most of this hardware that I managed to pick up on sale, as leftovers from upgrades or replacements or for this project. The only thing I do not have is the 2 500gb SSDs.

My current plan is to run truenas scale and mirror the OS install across the SSDs and then use the remaining space as metadata special devices, and then mirror the 2 4tb drives. The primary goal is to run a Plex server and mass storage of important files as well. I currently am using about 1TB of storage on a 2TB drive I have in my main desktop that accomplishes this purpose, so I believe 4TB will be more than enough and last me a long time. Are there any obvious issues with this setup?

Thank you.

 

[Fleshmauler]

You're likely going to get some dirt thrown your way for going purely consumer grade hardware & no ECC ram; I'm going to overlook that & simply ask for the specific model of the drives to make sure they aren't SMR.

//edit/ Just read the part about 'use the remaining space as metadata special devices' - no. Don't. HARD STOP.

A) don't partition your boot drives, multiple examples of the headaches this causes people
B) don't use create metadata cache/vdev using consumer SSDs - you lose that, you lose everything.
C) ESPECIALLY don't create a vdev on for your pool using your partition boot drives!

I cannot in any way recommend anything to do with "mass storage of important files" with what you have described.

Anyway, just check that drives are CMR instead of SMR, don't do the thing(s) I said not to do, and given that this seems to be all consumer grade hardware, just make sure you keep a backup of these files somewhere else. Preferably more than one.
/edit//

 

[CosmicTemplar]

Okay, thank you. I am using 2 IronWolf 4TB NAS 5900rpm Hard Drives(ST4000VN008). I will not do that then. The consumer hardware is because I was able to get it all cheap or free from past upgrades I have made or from friends. Is it that serious of a difference for a casual home NAS/data storage dump?

 

[Fleshmauler]

ST4000VN008 is a cmr drive; all clear for use.

In regards to the consumer hardware? 98% chance you'll be fine for you other than occasionally replacing a hard drive & having some edge case issue. Is it that serious? Ehhhh, no not really - depending on how seriously you take your data.

If I sounded a bit too serious in the previous post, it was because I read the words 'important data' & metadata cache on a boot partition. If you told me you just wanted to play around & there was nothing other than some movie files, I'd have told you to go for it with the understanding that it'd be a 'fun' mess to learn from; one with a very high chance of killing any data you put on it.

If I were you, I'd honestly go with a 250GB m.2 for boot (a single one), and just occasionally back up the config file. Clean install of Truenas & import of config is crazy easy. After you get stuff setup, go to System Settings> Advanced>Storage & change the "System Dataset Pool" to your hard drives - this is generally the endless logging; taking it off of the ssd will keep the ssd lifespan for much longer.

Then use the other drive for Plex, other apps, and/or VMs. That stuff will suck to run off of your hard drives.

 

[CosmicTemplar]

Ah, to be clear, I will not be messing around on here. I have older, shittier hardware to do that.

My idea was to have this as my main "data access point" while I back up biweekly to a separate computer I have that I specifically to serve as a data dump.

Thank you for the advice! I greatly appreciate it and will take that approach.

 

[Fleshmauler]

Anytime man, btw there are tons of resources on basic testing of hard drives, memory, etc prior to use in case you want to burn-in (validate that they don't have any very obvious issues that would have taken months to become noticeable) a few days prior to full setup.

There are a ton more resources on how to schedule automatic tasks like running smart tests on your hard drives & scrubs on your pools to help ensure your data is safe, email notifications in case any problems occur, etc. etc.

I obviously don't have links to any of these because I'm not THAT useful... At the very least make sure to run some mem-tests for a day and setup the automatic smart tests, scrubs, and email notifications once you got Truenas installed & your pools setup!

 

[ChrisRJ]

Please have a look at the "Recommended readings" in my signature and read at least the first couple of resources, which cover the basics of ZFS and TrueNAS.