Hardware for budget TrueNAS setup

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

Hello everyone!

This is my first time building a computer or anything related to TrueNAS. I do have some experience with software, but hardware is new grounds for me.

I have been looking around for second hand hardware and I was hoping if any of you kind volunteers would tell me if this is good or terrible as I am not sure myself! I am on a pretty low budget.

I am hoping to use this to back up photos, videos, files, hopefully streaming music to play with Navidrome, maybe a plex server and potentially other things, nothing crazy like hosting game servers or anything that. For now, the main thing is just to back up files, stream my music and movies/videos as well.

This is the hardware I have found so far:

- ASUS Q170M2 CDM SI Socket LGA-1151 Motherboard Q170 Chipset
- i3 7100 CPU

Should 32GB of RAM be good? Or should I go for 64GB.

Not sure what to look for in hard drives at the moment, especially how much storage/speed, I only have ~1.5TB in total data. I've heard HDD is preferable. What about boot drives? I've heard those should be relatively small SSD's, is that a good idea?

No clue what to do for looking for a case, just found a really cheap one (Think it could hold some drives! I have asked the person to give me some more details about the cases themselves).

Hope you all can help me build my first server!

Regards,
weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc

 

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

nothing crazy like hosting game servers or anything that.

or anything like* that.

 

[louisk]

For starting out, 32g is plenty. I suggest a minimum of 4x disks, you can choose raidz2 or striped mirrors. You can install on a thumb drive. I think the minimum is 8g or maybe it’s 16now. Either way, those aren’t expensive.
If you need to transcode your Plex streams that will eat cpu. If not, I wouldn’t think cpu would be a big deal.

Once you get that setup and running for 6mo you can start thinking about changing hardware if you have a need to spend $.

 

[ChrisRJ]

For starting out, 32g is plenty.

For the use-case laid out, this should indeed be more than enough (16 GB is the minimum). Exception would be running VMs and/or jails.

I suggest a minimum of 4x disks, you can choose raidz2 or striped mirrors.

What is the thinking behind this, relative to the stated use-case? The OP has about 1.5 TB of data at the moment. So even a mirror of 2 4 TB SSDs would be an option, if speed (for random access), noise, and power consumption are relevant factors. Alternatively a single 3-way mirror of HDDs with e.g. 10 TB would be more than sufficient.

You can install on a thumb drive.

Not anymore really. In theory, if we are talking about an enterprise-grade USB stick, it works. But those are expensive and difficult to source. The recommendation today is a pair (mirror) of small SSDs (or SATA DOMs, but those are usually more expensive). Anything at 16 GB or above will be plenty; on my system about 6 GB are used right now, but 8 GB seems a bit tight.

 

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

Not anymore really. In theory, if we are talking about an enterprise-grade USB stick, it works. But those are expensive and difficult to source. The recommendation today is a pair (mirror) of small SSDs (or SATA DOMs, but those are usually more expensive). Anything at 16 GB or above will be plenty; on my system about 6 GB are used right now, but 8 GB seems a bit tight.

Is this for boot drives?

---

Is the motherboard alright for what I'll need? (Sorry for asking, I'm not sure myself and some assurance would be helpful. )

 

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

What kind of drives would be good for this? Is there any specific speeds I need them to reach or some other specification that would be nice for them to be?

HHDs or SSDs considering the low budget? What about the arrangement? (E.g. 2 drives that are 5 TB each, or something like that)

Is it alright to buy them second hand if they're not too old?

Thank you all for the help!

 

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

- i3 7100 CPU

I've found an Intel CPU i5 6500 Quad Core at 3.2Ghz for cheaper funnily enough. Not sure if the seller has finalized yet but I'm pretty certain that this should be the one.

 

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

The OP has about 1.5 TB of data at the moment. So even a mirror of 2 4 TB SSDs would be an option, if speed (for random access), noise, and power consumption are relevant factors. Alternatively a single 3-way mirror of HDDs with e.g. 10 TB would be more than sufficient.

I have got 3x 2TB HHDs, would that be alright?

 

[ChrisRJ]

Is this for boot drives?

Yes

 

[ChrisRJ]

I have got 3x 2TB HHDs, would that be alright?

If the question is asked like this, I would respond "only you can tell". What is the thought process/background behind this question?

The overarching question you have to ask yourself is "how much are my data worth to me?". TrueNAS (and ZFS more specifically) is a great choice if you want maximum data protection. But that level of safety has its price in a number of ways. The more obvious one is that its requirements towards hardware are higher (in some aspects considerably) than for a normal home-built Linux server. The less obvious price is that some things that people are used from e.g. Synology or unRAID are not possible. The most prominent one is that you cannot simply extend capacity by adding a single disk; there are ways, but they are less flexible than what consumer devices can do. The root cause for those "limitations" is that ZFS was not built for home or small business use. It was developed for the biggest storage systems imaginable. There, you do not add one additional HDD, you add 20 more (or perhaps even 200) in one go.

Please have a look at the recommended readings in my signature. You probably do not need to completely digest everything there. But you will get a much better feeling, what ZFS and TrueNAS are and are not. Yes, this takes much more time than to ask the forum "what hardware should I buy?". But the key factor for determining the best possible hardware is what exactly(!) you want to do with it. To give an example: When I built my current system (see signature) in September 2020, it had taken me 8 weeks to finally decide which components I wanted. And that was with more than 10 years of running ZFS and more than 25 years of running servers. What I want to say: Don't rush things! Resist the temptation to buy something after having spent one week on the subject. Chances are there will be buyer's remorse.

Good luck!

 

[Etorix]

- ASUS Q170M2 CDM SI Socket LGA-1151 Motherboard Q170 Chipset

Q is "corporate desktop chipset", i.e. Z without overclocking. It could do, but, especially with an i3, the ideal board would be a C2x6 chipset (C226 for this generation) so ECC RAM would be supported.
Unfortunately, this particular board has Realtek and Intel i219LM 1 GbE NICs, none of which is really desirable. Unless you intend to put a 10 GbE card in there anyway, try to find a board with Intel i210 NIC. That's more important than ECC.

Should 32GB of RAM be good? Or should I go for 64GB.

In general, the more the better. But for serving 1.5 TB of data, 32 GB is already plenty.

Not sure what to look for in hard drives at the moment, especially how much storage/speed, I only have ~1.5TB in total data. I've heard HDD is preferable. What about boot drives? I've heard those should be relatively small SSD's, is that a good idea?

Any small and cheap SSD is a good boot drive.

No clue what to do for looking for a case, just found a really cheap one with this photo (interested in the bottom left one as it looks like it could hold some drives. I have asked the person to give me some more details about the cases themselves):

Anything which can hold your drives with some airflow to keep them cool.
5.25" bays are of little use… but you don't need many 3.5" bays either. The one on the bottom left actually looks it misses most of the drive locking parts you actually need.

 

[weiorjgoOIJQ@IOJc]

If the question is asked like this, I would respond "only you can tell". What is the thought process/background behind this question?

The overarching question you have to ask yourself is "how much are my data worth to me?". TrueNAS (and ZFS more specifically) is a great choice if you want maximum data protection. But that level of safety has its price in a number of ways. The more obvious one is that its requirements towards hardware are higher (in some aspects considerably) than for a normal home-built Linux server. The less obvious price is that some things that people are used from e.g. Synology or unRAID are not possible. The most prominent one is that you cannot simply extend capacity by adding a single disk; there are ways, but they are less flexible than what consumer devices can do. The root cause for those "limitations" is that ZFS was not built for home or small business use. It was developed for the biggest storage systems imaginable. There, you do not add one additional HDD, you add 20 more (or perhaps even 200) in one go.

Please have a look at the recommended readings in my signature. You probably do not need to completely digest everything there. But you will get a much better feeling, what ZFS and TrueNAS are and are not. Yes, this takes much more time than to ask the forum "what hardware should I buy?". But the key factor for determining the best possible hardware is what exactly(!) you want to do with it. To give an example: When I built my current system (see signature) in September 2020, it had taken me 8 weeks to finally decide which components I wanted. And that was with more than 10 years of running ZFS and more than 25 years of running servers. What I want to say: Don't rush things! Resist the temptation to buy something after having spent one week on the subject. Chances are there will be buyer's remorse.

Good luck!

Thank you for the advice and pointing me to where I can read more and become more educated this special operating system thingy (still not too sure xd) and all its intricacies, I haven't read it all but I'll be sure to read it as time goes on.

I've clearly fallen into the trap of being new to something and not considering the complexities of it. I do normally take this kind of "this should be easy/simple" or "this topic/area should be simple" bias when I'm in other communities/fields, but clearly this hasn't been the case for this time. It must've been because coming into this whole world of TrueNAS, self hosting, Nextcloud, networking shenanigans and all these other opportunities created with these things has opened my eyes to so many opportunities and got me blinded in all my excitement! I've been talking to my friends about all these little things I've been setting up with my Raspberry Pi and old MacBook Air running linux, it's been great fun so far and I know I'll keep doing this kind of thing for a long time coming (especially considering lots of industry trends with technology companies).

While I am not sure if I have the proper hard drives and hardware to set up TrueNAS (a software not set for newbies as you've mentioned, as compared to say, software for PiVPN and all those 'one command install' systems/software), I do hope I can get something working at all with this configuration or with some modifications.

I did look a bit into how expandability was clearly not set as a priority for ZFS as data integrity was put as one of the top, if not, the top priority. I hope to have around 1.5TB in total in the 'total pool'/available storage, even 1TB would be alright for me for some personal philosophical reasons related to hoarding of all types, including digitally, at least for the next few years. I'll have to look into whether my setup will suffice on my own as I think I do understand it a little better, I will heed your advice and to make sure I don't throw myself into this and take more deliberation in any significant choices (all the hardware I've purchased so far will still be good to use for other uses if this doesn't work out, so I don't have any regrets with that thankfully!).

For now, I'll continue to collect parts for this server as time goes on and adapt it to my needs. I'll have a look at the ZFS structure and see what is (and could be) available for me and see if that suits my needs. I might even just set up something else completely while having fun with actually trying this kind of stuff with building a PC of my own for the first time!

Coming into this, I'm new to a LOT of things here, not just building a server or setting up TrueNAS. I appreciate everyone who has replied to me and given advice of their own and I am grateful for that. Now that I've gotten a good direction to go with where to gain new knowledge (thanks ChrisRJ!), I think I can continue to explore what lies in the future on my own (relatively 'on my own').

Once again, thank you all!

 

[Davvo]

Learning TrueNAS and ZFS is fun, and it looks more scary that actually is!