Some question's and general advice for TrueNAS and ubuntu 20.04

[LatencyRemix]

Hi TrueNAS community, I am wondering if yall would be able to help me understand a bit better and give opinions and advice with TrueNAS .

I recently decided to set up a home server pc to run Ubuntu 20.04 for running game server's and filer server. I've seen TrueNAS mention a lot on LTT video's and decided to have a look into it. But im not realy familiar with it yet.

The system used for the server:
AMD 3950x
ASUS ROG Strix X570-i Mini ATX
16GB DDR 4 ram
1 512GB nvme2 SSD
850W SFX PSU
4x HDD (random old WD green's i had laying around, not unifirm in size) on a USB probox dock

For my question's i have
: It sounds like TrueNAS is its own OS, But can it be installer in ubuntu as a service?
:And the other way around. If i was to reformat and install TrueNAS, going by the features cemi circle picture would then running Ubuntu as a VM cut its performance for having multiple game servers running on it?
:Is it even possible to have the main NAS storage used over USB instead off them all being direct SATA


Thanks for reading

 

[joeschmuck]

For my question's i have
: It sounds like TrueNAS is its own OS, But can it be installer in ubuntu as a service?

I will try to answer and I may get something wrong but the idea should be the same.
TrueNAS (Core) is based on FreeBSD OS and is a basically the OS, not an application that runs on FreeBSD. TrueNAS (Scale) is the same thing but based on Debian OS. So both should be considered OS's.

You can install these in a Virtual Machine should you desire but support for this will be limited as that is not the typical design. I run TrueNAS on ESXi as a VM, and I also run other OS's on that same machine as separate VMs.

:And the other way around. If i was to reformat and install TrueNAS, going by the features cemi circle picture would then running Ubuntu as a VM cut its performance for having multiple game servers running on it?

I think you need to read more about TrueNAS hardware requirements. You stated in your posting that you had a mix of drive sizes. You need to understand how ZFS file format works or at least how to properly design/configure your hard drives. Please understand that ZFS is a file system designed for data safety/reliability. Speed is not the number one goal however you can achieve fantastic speed if you design the ZFS pool/vdev correctly.

Personally I would not use TrueNAS as a VM Hypervisor if that is your goal, I would use ESXi or some other Hypervisor. If you really need a NAS then TrueNAS is one of the best out there. You can run some VM's on it and many people do but support is limited, not non existent.

:Is it even possible to have the main NAS storage used over USB instead off them all being direct SATA

Yes, but it is not recommended, but it does work and some people will start off this way. Most will eventually convert to internal drives but you will have a few that like the USB route for backups. It's not fast.

So TrueNAS could be your file server and a gaming server, several people have done that but you would be good to buy some new hardware if you did want to build a TrueNAS system. 16GB RAM is the minimum anyone would recommend and we like to say 32GB is really recommended based on what most people try to do with their NAS's. In your case I would recommend 64GB RAM (since you want to run VM's that might need a lot of RAM) but you would need to figure what you need. My system has 64GB RAM and I allocate 16GB RAM for my TrueNAS VM and I only do basic backups and I can stream a few movies as desired (which I rarely do these days). This leaves me with a lot of RAM to make several VM's for whatever I desire and ESXi is very well supported.

The big thing is I think you will need better hardware in the long run for what you desire.

So you could build a TrueNAS system with what you have for hardware but the drive size mismatches are likely going to disappoint you. Read up on ZFS.

 

[sretalla]

it does work and some people will start off this way. Most will eventually convert to internal drives

... after the second USB controller failure convinces them that it wasn't just an old USB enclosure dying a natural death.

External USB drives as data pool members is a ticking time bomb... play carefully with bombs.