[Suggestion Needed] How many drives should I get for my needs?

[YaarPatandar]

I am a novice at TrueNAS or any NAS at all. I wanted to get suggestions on how many drives I might need for my NAS. My primary use is Media Consumption via SFTP or Plex Server.

• Should I get 1 NAS Type Drive and have my Media on that, while I will have a copy of the media on a external drive separate from the NAS system.
• Should I get 2 NAS Type Drive, for this I would like to setup the configuration where both drives have the identical data. One for use of Media Consumption and One as a backup. Is there any RAID/RAIDZ config for this type of setup.

Please excuse me if I have no clue of what I am talking about. This is all new to me and I am learning as I go.

Thanks.

 

[IOSonic]

Hi,

I am also a novice to TrueNAS and OpenZFS, but I have some experience with storage in general, so I can help you at least a little. :)

I recommend starting with these questions:

• Is FreeNAS the right system for you?
• How much data do you have right now?
• What storage configuration will you use?
• What is your budget?

"Is TrueNAS the right system for you?"

I hope to share this opinion without disrespect to anyone. I really like TrueNAS, follow its development closely and have donated to it. It is powerful and feature-rich software. I would recommend it to an intermediate-level computer user familiar with storage concepts & protocols. It simply cannot be beaten, in my opinion, as a home storage solution for such a user.

I would not recommend TrueNAS to a beginner user for storage of irreplaceable data. TrueNAS can be complicated to deploy well and maintain if you're shy on storage fundamentals. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. If you lose your wedding photos due to admin error, you may be divorced.

If your primary concern is getting a device to talk to Plex over SMB as quickly as possible without having to study a new technology, I strongly suggest you look into a Synology Disk Station. If you don't mind the time investment of learning this new thing, and you have a backup of anything you intend to store on it, then go for it.

"How much data do you have right now?"

The answer to this question will inform every other decision that follows. You should also consider how much you expect your data to grow too.

"What storage configuration will you use?

This is the most important question you will need to answer regardless of which storage system you choose. It will determine how you configure the disks in your system. In any storage system, you will configure multiple disks into a single logical volume. The type of logical volume you choose will determine your data's safety, capacity and performance. For example, you will find that choosing a logical volume type that offers great safety (say, RAIDZ2 a.k.a. RAID6), will decrease the performance of that volume and its usable capacity. On the other hand, choosing a RAIDZ (a.k.a., RAID5) volume will offer additional speed and capacity, but decrease the safety of that data.

In TrueNAS's OpenZFS system, that logical volume is called a storage pool. Please read the following short webpage on RAID levels and their advantages/disadvantages. You will then be able to understand the ZFS equivalents (i.e., ZFS mirror = RAID1, ZFS RAIDZ = RAID 5, etc) that you can configure in your storage pool. While OpenZFS's RAID levels are not exactly the same as standard RAID levels, consider them functionally the same for the purposes of this reply.

You will find this RAID calculator useful to help you plan your decisions. I strongly recommend making sure you have a good understanding of these before making purchasing or storage decisions. Please ask questions if you need help, too .:)

Lastly, consider whether your chosen storage system will let you add more disks to your logical volumes. I do not believe TrueNAS permits this* (someone please correct me if I am wrong)

"What is your budget?"

Your budget needs to be able to support your desired storage configuration obviously.

The disks are usually the most expensive part of the system, but also the most important. All disks are not created equal. Some are specifically manufactured with endurance and error-recovery characteristics suited for a NAS systems. Spend what money is necessary to buy drives specifically advertised for NAS usage . Be mindful of SMR vs CMR drives.

You also need to consider how your other hardware like RAM, will be enough for your build, and whether it is acceptable for what you want to do. Check out the hardware requirements.

----

I hope these basics are enough to get you started. There's a lot left out here, so feel free to ask more questions as you decide what is best for you.

 

[YaarPatandar]

• Is FreeNAS the right system for you?
  • I believe so, I have a background in Computer Engineering so I should be able to get a hang on it after learning. TrueNAS seems right because I will have more control over the system, plus I can use it for more than just Plex as my needs grow.
  • Plus I was playing around in TrueNAS and I was able to get it setup with the way I needed with Plex.
• How much data do you have right now?
  • Around 3TB
• What storage configuration will you use?
  • I would like to use the configuration where I have a copy of the Data. Just in case it the main hard drive breaks.
  • I do already have a copy of the data on a hard drive separate from the NAS.
• What is your budget?
  • Depends, right now I only need a hard drive and yup I am looking into a NAS hard drive.

 

[YaarPatandar]

• How much data do you have right now?
  • Around 3TB

This is also around 10 years, so my data doesn't increase a lot in short period of time.

 

[fourpastmidnight]

You can increase storage in TrueNAS, but you must do so in specific ways. You cannot simply add new disks to a storage pool. You must create a new vdev (virtual device) containing one or more disks, and then add the new vdev to the storage pool to increase the pool's capacity. IMPORTANT: Never use one disk in a vdev. If you lose a vdev, you lose the entire storage pool! There is some ongoing work in OpenZFS to provide more flexibility in how storage can be added, but this is still under development, so I wouldn't count on this being available any time soon.

As for some general advice, I would stay away from RAID 5/RAIDZ (a/k/a RAIDZ1). It does not provide sufficient fault tolerance. Ask me...I know. I have a Techus NAS with 5-disks using RAID5. The first drive failed after 8 years! Another disk could have gone at any moment, rendering my data lost! I would recommend nothing less than RAIDZ2 (RAID 6), or using mirroring, depending on your capacity needs, fault tolerance comfort, and budget. (Unlike traditional RAID1, ZFS mirroring offers more than just 2-way mirroring. You can have n-way mirroring, where typically you would use 3- or 4-way mirroring to provide for additional fault tolerance when using mirroring.)

I'm in a similar situation to you, @YaarPatandar. I have 3.5TB of data from my old NAS (on a backup drive) that I need to put into TrueNAS, looking to expand its usage to hold laptop backups, function as a media server, and potentially running virtualized/containerized workloads. I'm looking to set up as large as 40TB of usable space.

To give you an idea of how I arrived at my choices, I will only be able to afford to purchase 8 - 10 HDDs (@ 10TB ea.) for my storage pool (depending on my ultimate choice of chassis). Let's assume 8. If I were to do 3-way mirroring (in my mind, the minimum I would consider for my fault tolerance preferences), I would be left with 2 drives where I would only be able to do 2-way mirroring with those and severely reduce my usable capacity. Or, I could do 4-way mirroring, vastly improving fault tolerance while at the same time greatly reducing my usable capacity. So I have opted to create 2 vdevs consisting of 4 HDDs each, configured for RAIDZ2 (RAID 6), and add both vdevs to one storage pool. I could have chosen to create a single vdev with all 8 drives using RAIDZ2, but my write performance would suffer. Plus, using 2 vdevs, while reducing my usable capacity a bit, actually slightly increases the fault tolerance of my solution. In any event, the general advice is to not go too wide on your vdevs. No more than 11, and usually no more than 4 or 5--especially for smaller capacity NAS implementations with an equally smaller number of physical HDDs.

Again, these are the choices I made based on my circumstances, needs, and fault tolerance preferences and may not be what you desire. But I hope I have helped provide some context to the thought process I went through to derive the overall shape of my solution. I still have some final decisions to be made before I end up purchasing any hardware, but as @IOSonic pointed out, it is really important to understand what you want to use the NAS for, your fault tolerance preferences, and the amount of storage you want available (now and into the somewhat distant future), and determine how you would meet your storage capacity and fault tolerance preferences through structuring that storage in TrueNAS. Then adjust until those goals meet your budget. You will most likely find there will be a struggle between Fault Tolerance, Usable Capacity, and Budget which you will need to balance. That has been my experience so far in trying to design my own TrueNAS solution.

HTH.

 

[das1996]

I just implemented a nas few weeks ago. I had several goals and a difficult time deciding which path to go.

a) User data for nextcloud (separate vm)
b) daily dumps of user data from pc's

Ultimately I decided to go with a 2 x 2disk mirror. That is, a striped pair of mirrors. 50% of capacity is lost, but this should provide for best performance and good redundancy. Chance of 2 disks failing in the same mirror at the same time is unlikely. I'm using 8TB disks, ~15TB of usable storage.

Syncthing is used for the daily dumps. Given how it operates, the updates are relatively quick. Daily snapshots are made as well. In a few weeks I hope to set up another box to replicate this to. Someone will probably come in and say this is not a backup solution. Yes and no. It's a more current backup than dumping to usb drives every 3 months.

 

[fourpastmidnight]

I ought to add, for completeness, that there is another way to increase your storage in TrueNAS: take all disks in a VDEV and increase their capacity, one-by-one. So, if you have 4 disks in VDEV, say 2TB each, and you want to increase your space, first, you'd take one drive "out" of the VDEV and replace it with a larger drive, e.g. 4TB. Let the array resilver. Then repeat for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th disks. Once the last disk is replaced and the array reslivered, the array will automatically expand--in this case, to 16TB (raw space--not usable, which would depend on whether you're using ZFS Mirroring, RAIDZ1 (please don't), or RAIDZ2). The biggest downside to this is that you have to replace all the disks in the VDEV to realize the additional space. This is why sometimes people opt to create a new VDEV and add the new VDEV to the existing storage pool. Again, your capacity needs and budget (and, to some extent, your existing fault tolerance strategy) will dictate the approach you will take. (I.e. if you're using RAIDZ1 (similar to RAID5) and you take a disk out of the VDEV, you're one disk away from losing the VDEV and the entire storage pool. Again, a really good reason to not use RAIDZ1. The same applies for a 2-way mirror (think, RAID 1)--which is why most people suggest 3-way mirrors at minimum if you think you'll want to expand VDEV capacity as a way of expanding your storage pool capacity.)

 

[Bikerchris]

I am a novice at TrueNAS or any NAS at all. I wanted to get suggestions on how many drives I might need for my NAS. My primary use is Media Consumption via SFTP or Plex Server.

• Should I get 1 NAS Type Drive and have my Media on that, while I will have a copy of the media on a external drive separate from the NAS system.
• Should I get 2 NAS Type Drive, for this I would like to setup the configuration where both drives have the identical data. One for use of Media Consumption and One as a backup. Is there any RAID/RAIDZ config for this type of setup.

Please excuse me if I have no clue of what I am talking about. This is all new to me and I am learning as I go.

Thanks.

You've probably had enough feedback now, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents.

To answer your question, you could use 1 drive, however you'd be missing out on the redundancy TrueNAS offers. If it were to fail, you're pretty much done and your data is lost.

Using 2 drives would be ideal, and in your case you could setup a mirror, which is very easy in TrueNAS.

It goes without saying, that having an SSD for the TrueNAS install is the norm, ideally 2 that are mirrored (an option during the install process).

You mentioned having already downloaded and installed it, as well as setting up plex. Before you start to lean on it too much, I would advise learning more via the resources here, perhaps even get yourself into trouble and then recover your dataset. There are also optimal ways to have Plex setup, that makes transferring the config to another machine or hard drive easier.

I hope that helps.