Truenas Scale - Dell R720 - Sanity Check

[Jason Giddens]

Hey all,

I have been running a Freenas 9 and then 11.2 server for many years and I am preparing to upgrade my hardware. My use cases are simple, Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Sabnzbd, Transmission in docker containers. I also want to run some other docker containers (Pihole, ubiquiti, home asst) and probably a full VM or two, more if I am testing something. I just today purchased the following:

Dell PowerEdge R720
2x E5-2690 (16 cores)
96Gb of ECC RAM, DDR3
H710 Perc RAID controller, 512mb
Samsung EVO 250Gb M2 drive, with USB adapter
4x 4TB HGST 7.2k, 6Gb/s SAS spinning drives
2x 200Gb Toshiba 12Gb/s SAS SSD's

I will flash the H710 to IT mode
I plan to install to and boot from the M2 SSD connected to the internal USB header.
I will use the 2x 200gb SSD's as a data store for VM's, containers etc. 1 Mirrored VDEV
the 4x 4Tb will be my media tank, 2x2 mirrored vdevs. I will add another pair of mirrored 4tb drives once I migrate some data

Questions -
- I know the M2 SSD is overkill for the boot, but I already have it lying around. Any good reason I shouldn't use it instead of buying a new USB stick?
- L2Arc, SLOG, ZIL. I have never had these any of these before. Do i need them? This is for home use, not enterprise.
- How does my storage pool design sound?
- I hear scale is pretty solid for basic use cases already. I plan to go Scale on the baremetal instead of ESXI or Proxmox. Is that crazy?
- What am I missing?

Thanks all!

 

[Tigersharke]

The only few comments I can make are these.

Boot or any other continual use for USB (especially a USB stick) is *NOT* recommended as the stick is not designed for such active or frequent use, and USB subsystems have other throughput issues (or complications) which more standard data storage devices/systems do not.

RAID cards generally are a concern if they would take control of cache and other various functions away from ZFS or if they would be doing such functions *in addition to* ZFS. This is because ZFS can only assume what is presented to it, which it believes is direct and unfettered hardware access, so that it can understand what is happening and effect its own functions properly-- especially for data integrity.

 

[Ericloewe]

Samsung EVO 250Gb M2 drive, with USB adapter

Have you looked at the optical drive replacement bays that take M.2 or 2.5" SSDs? Power is slightly tricky on the R720s, but there's some info somewhere in the ServeTheHome forums. It's a bit neater than having a USB to SATA bridge plus M.2 SSD flapping around inside the server.

H710 Perc RAID controller, 512mb

You will want to look into crossflashing that controller: https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/cross-flashing-dell-h310-h710-mini-to-it-mode.166/

 

[murzik]

I have negative experience trying to install Scale on dell R320/330 with RAID card flashed to IT mode and also HPDl360 G5/G6. The problem that installer will not see any drives, but USB attached. I had to install Scale on USB drive ( actually SSD using USB to SATA adapter). Once Scale was installed it would see drives connected to RAID card and I was able to create POOL. Did not have time to dig deeper into the problem, so keeping CORE on my dell for now.

 

[Jason Giddens]

I have negative experience trying to install Scale on dell R320/330 with RAID card flashed to IT mode and also HPDl360 G5/G6. The problem that installer will not see any drives, but USB attached. I had to install Scale on USB drive ( actually SSD using USB to SATA adapter). Once Scale was installed it would see drives connected to RAID card and I was able to create POOL. Did not have time to dig deeper into the problem, so keeping CORE on my dell for now.

Which raid card were you using in the R320/330?

 

[murzik]

H310 and H330 flashed to IT mode. Also whatever card comes with R710. I believe the problem is SCALE installer and RAID card. As I had same issues with older HP servers. But I think in your case, you should be able to install SCALE on SSD connected to USB header. You can install on SSD connected to USB, just not on HDD attached to RAID card.

 

[Zain]

One of my current setups is a Dell R720/8x3.5 drives/H710/128GB RAM/TN-SCALE...

• Identify and Flash your H710 - https://fohdeesha.com/docs/perc/
• Slam 8 data drives in your server
• Get one of these to power your sata ssd - your ssd will just sit inside the chassis (or spend the cash and get what Eric mentioned above) - also requires a sata data cable plugged into the optical drive sata port on the mobo (it's the blue sata port I think?). If optical drive is already there, you shouldn't need to buy these.
• Install TN-SCALE on your internal sata SSD
• Setup data volume
• install apps (don't forget truecharts)
• Enjoy.

STAY AWAY from running TN on a usb drive, as others have mentioned.

Worth mentioning - if you are only using 6 of the hot bays on the server for data drives you can put your SSD in one of the last two (assuming this is the 8x3.5 drive bay model). As you start to fill your drives and or require more storage, you could later on use the cable listed above to move your SSD internally and free up those last two hot bays for data drives.