TrueNAS Scale Optimal Setup?

[matchaman]

I have been messing around with TrueNAS Scale for a while, but I am now looking to using it as my home NAS solution. Bellow will be the hardware I am planning to use. My main use cases will be a network share that only I will use, as well as a Jellyfin/Plex server. The media will be a mixture of 480P-2160P content, all mkv files, I don't know off the top of my head what the encoding is. I will have syncthing running to sync files some files between my phone, tablet, TrueNAS (this machine), and maybe another TrueNAS System for a little redundancy. What is an optimal setup with what I have? The main concern I have is the cache. I had planned on using 2 4TB WD Drives, but reading some of the other posts, it sounds like that may actually hurt performance than help? Was also thinking of RaidZ1 or RaidZ2 (loosing 1 or 2 discs).

ZimaCube (N100)
4 Core N100 3.3Ghz
8GB DDR4 (I will likely upgrade this to 16GB)
256GB SSD (Will likely use this for boot)
5-6x 8TB Toshiba N300 HDDs
1-2x 4TB WD SN850X
Maybe an Intel Arc graphics card in future if needed for transcoding.

 

[danb35]

The main concern I have is the cache

The system you're suggesting won't benefit from any sort of cache.

I had planned on using 2 4TB WD Drives

What for? If you're intending to use them as part of the main data pool, I'd strongly recommend against it, as it will mean wasting half the space on all the 8 TB disks.

 

[matchaman]

The system you're suggesting won't benefit from any sort of cache.

What for? If you're intending to use them as part of the main data pool, I'd strongly recommend against it, as it will mean wasting half the space on all the 8 TB disks.

I was planning to use the 2 WD SSDs for the cache, but since it seems I don't need a cache, I will not use them.

 

[Stux]

1-2x 4TB WD SN850X

This is a pair of NVMe drives.

Mirrored, this might make a nice "flash" pool for running VMs etc and whatnot.

Leaving the other drives to use as a rust pool with either RaidZ1 or Z2 depending (i'd use Z2)

Other than I know nothing of this ZimaCube... sounds fair... does it use SATA ports or is it something strange like USB?

 

[matchaman]

The ZimaCube has a Sata backplane that is connected through an EDP cable (laptop display). Weird choice, but I'm hoping it will work well. A bit worried about the N100 processor being powerful enough however.

This is a pair of NVMe drives.

Mirrored, this might make a nice "flash" pool for running VMs etc and whatnot.

Leaving the other drives to use as a rust pool with either RaidZ1 or Z2 depending (i'd use Z2)

Other than I know nothing of this ZimaCube... sounds fair... does it use SATA ports or is it something strange like USB?