TrueNAS Scale - General quesitons

[VonVoid]

Hi all,

I'm new to TrueNAS and this is my first post, so I'm trying to add all information needed.

I've just finished my home-built server and think TrueNAS Scale will fit the best as per the information I've found.

When reading through the forum on some different thread I noticed that you refer "cache" to L2ARC.
I'm wondering if it will be worth to add the 2 NVMe drives as L2ARC or not? I saw a lot of discussions about minimum having 64GB ram which I´m above.

But as you see below I'm not quiet sure yet what the server will be used for, as it will be my first "real" server and I'm having some different ideas for the future and it will only be used by me and maybe up to 5 persons at the time maximum, but most of the time by only me.
As for the hardware this is the base setup that I'm having right now and it will be upgraded more in the future as I'm not aware of how much hardware I'll be needing for the upcoming year or two.

Mobo: MACHINIST ZX-DU99D4
CPU: 2 x Xeon E5-2640 v3
RAM: 128GB DDR4 ECC
SSD: 2 x Kingston A2000 1TB M.2 NVMe
HDD: 4 x Hitachi 2TB, 2 x WD 2TB (will be added more in the future when a controller card have been bought)
GPU: EVGA 1060 6GB

Ideas to add to the server:
Websites
Home Assistant
VM's
Cache server
Proxy server
Personal music server
Plex
VPN
Gaming server
Nextcloud


Thanks!

 

[winnielinnie]

I'm wondering if it will be worth to add the 2 NVMe drives as L2ARC or not? I saw a lot of discussions about minimum having 64GB ram which I´m above.

Hold off on adding an L2ARC vdev for the meantime. It might not even be worth it, so it's best to wait for a real performance issue to arise before even considering it.

 

[VonVoid]

Hold off on adding an L2ARC vdev for the meantime. It might not even be worth it, so it's best to wait for a real performance issue to arise before even considering it.

Would you rather recommend to use the as ZFS LOG or Metadata devices for now?
As I guess the best would be to install the OS on a SATA SSD, or will I drop in performance then compared to M.2 NVMe?

 

[NugentS]

What are you booting off if you are considering the 2 NVMe as "cache"/L2ARC.
As @winnielinnie says, with 128GB of RAM you are unlikley to need / use an L2ARC

 

[VonVoid]

What are you booting off if you are considering the 2 NVMe as "cache"/L2ARC.
As @winnielinnie says, with 128GB of RAM you are unlikley to need / use an L2ARC

I wasn't thinking of that at first as I've been looking at Unraid and their USB solution.
So I'll have to replace one of the HDD's with a SATA SSD instead as boot drive.

Same question to you then if you'd recommend to use them as ZFS LOG or Metadata devices instead?
Just thinking on what would be the best use for them in my environment.

 

[NugentS]

ZFS LOG only if using NFS or iSCSI type shares. It will have no effect otherwise
Special vdev - No or at least think very carefully before doing this as its pool critical and can't be removed unless using mirrors at the top level
L2ARC - I doubt it
Metadata, maybe - but try without first. L2ARC can be set for metatdata only and is pool safe I believe. So you only need one. If it fails the pool just goes back to working off the HDD's