Recommended hardware specs and prebuilt solutions

[flakes]

I apologize for this question, I've done my research but I feel overwhelmed by the infos and I could really use your experience to point me in the right direction.

I need to build a storage + virtualization server for a small office, about 10TB of data and between 5 and 10 VMs. VMs will be both Windows and Linux and have to run a graphical interface.
No CPU/GPU intensive tasks. Our office handles mostly documents and images.
I want to use TrueNAS SCALE, I'm not comfortable with BSD.
Budget is around 4k € but I would like to contain the costs.
We have a rack cabinet in a closed, climatized room.

I'm not an hardware expert so I'd love to have some help!
What specs should I aim for?
Which IXsystems solution best suits my needs?
Which other servers work well with TrueNAS out of the box or with minimum replacements (like RAID Controller)

I'd like to overshoot the minimum requirements a bit and get something that can be upgraded if the need, hopefully, arises.
Thank you very much, I just need to be pointed in the right direction to continue my research ...then bother you again, eventually :P

 

[nabsltd]

I need to build a storage + virtualization server for a small office, about 10TB of data and between 5 and 10 VMs.

If you have 10TB of data right now, then you probably need to budget for about 30TB of usable storage. "Usable" means after any sort of ZFS protection. So, if you mirror everything, 60TB of raw storage. If you use raidz1, you'd use one drive for parity; raidz2 would use two drives; striping of 2x raidz1 vdevs would use 2 drives for parity, etc. The reason for the 30TB usable is you want to be below 50% utilization to start, and have some room to grow. You also might need some NVMe as L2ARC or SLOG (depending on client connection requirements).

With that much storage, and the requirements to run 5-10 VMs, you'll also need a decent amount of RAM...10x 4GB (not very big) VMs is 40GB just to start. So, a good starting point would be 128GB of RAM.

The CPU would have to handle whatever load the VMs require, which only you know.

Then, there is the chassis to hold everything.

Those 4 items are the vast majority of the cost of the box...network cards, HBA, etc., are going to be almost an afterthought in comparison.

I'd start looking at IXsystems boxes that meet at least the first two the specs I listed so you can see if the prices fit your budget, and if you have to adjust either your budget or your expectations.

 

[Arwen]

We have resources for misc. things, (see Resources tab at top of forum screen). Here are some suggested reading for new TrueNAS users;

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to...

www.truenas.com

Introduction to ZFS

This is a short introduction to ZFS. It is really only intended to convey the bare minimum knowledge needed to start diving into ZFS and is in no way meant to cut Michael W. Lucas' and Allan Jude's book income. It is a bit of a spiritual...

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Picking a ZFS Pool Layout to Optimize Performance

Part 1 of the blog post is here, covering basics, striped pools, and mirrored vdevs: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/zfs-pool-performance-1/ Part 2 covers RAID-Z and some example workload scenarios...

www.truenas.com

I have to waste an entire drive just for booting?

This resource was originally created by user: jgreco on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. With the advent of TrueNAS Scale, we seem to be getting a large number of people from the Linux community who are not quite grasping what...

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Hardware Buying Guide - some tips for not getting ripped off

This resource was originally created by user: jgreco on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. I’ve been giving this information out piecemeal for years, and should maybe have it summarized in one place. There’s been a lot of people...

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Hardware Recommendations Guide

This is the latest edition of the FreeNAS Community hardware recommendations guide. The current major version is R2, dated January 2021, with the last minor update on 2021-01-24. The format has moved away from the forum post form factor, to...

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What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

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[flakes]

Thank you very much to both of you, I think I've already red most of what Arwen posted. I'm software oriented and beside assembling a 2-3 gaming PCs I don't have hardware experience. I'm aware servers and gaming PCs and two different things.

12/16TB with RAIDZ2 will be more than enough, right now we have less than 1TB and it's mostly very poor managements of duplicates. We also have to delete most files after few months for legal requirements.

I checked some refurbished servers, something like this would be good? What needs to be changed?
https://www.servershop24.de/en/hpe-dl360-gen9-v4-storage-server/a-125485/
RAM is less than 128GB but it can be expanded and following the 1TB/1GB general rule for ZFS it might be enough.

Another question, I've seen many used servers with plenty of DDR3 RAM, is it ok for this kind of use?

 

[Etorix]

I checked some refurbished servers, something like this would be good? What needs to be changed?
https://www.servershop24.de/en/hpe-dl360-gen9-v4-storage-server/a-125485/
RAM is less than 128GB but it can be expanded and following the 1TB/1GB general rule for ZFS it might be enough.

For TrueNAS you have to replace HP's RAID controller by a true HBA—or at least find a way to "lobotomise" it to act as HBA. Carefully research that!
With (less than) 10 TB of storage, RAM will largely be dictated by the VMS. Same for the number of cores.

Another question, I've seen many used servers with plenty of DDR3 RAM, is it ok for this kind of use?

DDR3 is cheaper but older, and that means the hardware is old too. So the underlying question is: How long do you expect to run and maintain this server?

 

[flakes]

For TrueNAS you have to replace HP's RAID controller by a true HBA—or at least find a way to "lobotomise" it to act as HBA. Carefully research that!
With (less than) 10 TB of storage, RAM will largely be dictated by the VMS. Same for the number of cores.


DDR3 is cheaper but older, and that means the hardware is old too. So the underlying question is: How long do you expect to run and maintain this server?

How much time can I get out of something like that?

This is another option I'm looking at
https://www.servershop24.de/en/dell-r740xd-v2-rack-server/a-124755/
It requires more RAM and it will exceed my budget once I add RAM, change the HBA and add an NVMe for L2ARC.

Is it worth the 2K€ difference? How long can I expect it to last?

Thank you again for the quick replies

 

[mrpasc]

With that Dell you should be good for next five years. 2 of the Xeon Gold's seems to be little over the top for your 5 to 10 VMs. We do use those processors with ESXi for hosting triple the number of VMs per processor.
In general for filesharing you should go for less core but higher single core frequency as SAMBA is still mostly single threated.
It comes with iDRAC enterprise license, that's nice as this offers full out of management.
The Dell Perc H740 needs to be swapped out even if it has kind of JBOD functionality. But you should be able to sell it for at least double the price you have to pay for a decent SAS 12 HBA like a Dell HBA330 so that will not add additional costs.
What about storage, you did not mention if your storage needs need to fit in your budget? Hard disks or Flash?
And do not spent money for L2ARC in advance. First monitor your cache hit rate, second: max out your RAM (ARC is much faster than L2ARC).
You can add L2ARC later if it is really needed (and after you have maxed out your RAM). Maybe then is new budget available....

 

[flakes]

I though the same about the CPUs, It's too much for my needs.

What about my first option?
https://www.servershop24.de/en/hpe-dl360-gen9-v4-storage-server/a-125485/
"Raw specs" (forgive me the term) is better, more RAM, more Storage and a weaker CPU but with higher Ghz per core but it's clearly older: Gen9 V4 is before 2015...
How long will it likely live? is it a good base?
I've read good things about the PowerEdge R740.

Speaking about your VMs, how much resources to they have each?
I don't need them for hosting or routing traffic (maybe one or two) but as remote, extremely hardened workstations with VNC (for example) inside the company VPN.
I don't trust my colleagues (and they don't trust themselves, great thing) accessing the company files trough their everyday-use PCs.

We handle very sensitive data, computational/memory requirements aren't high but data integrity and confidentiality is.

 

[mrpasc]

I though the same about the CPUs, It's too much for my needs.

What about my first option?
https://www.servershop24.de/en/hpe-dl360-gen9-v4-storage-server/a-125485/
"Raw specs" (forgive me the term) is better, more RAM, more Storage and a weaker CPU but with higher Ghz per core but it's clearly older: Gen9 V4 is before 2015...
How long will it likely live? is it a good base?
I've read good things about the PowerEdge R740.

Well, myself would not use that for production.
Nice for a lab, but too old for production. And, you mentioned data security and confidentiality, so you should use a platform where you can expect security updates (Bios, driver, ILO) for the whole life of your machine.

Speaking about your VMs, how much resources to they have each?

Well, it is a very heterogeneous environment. From 2 to 16 cores, from 8GB to 128GB Ram.

I don't need them for hosting or routing traffic (maybe one or two) but as remote, extremely hardened workstations with VNC (for example) inside the company VPN.
I don't trust my colleagues (and they don't trust themselves, great thing) accessing the company files trough their everyday-use PCs.

We handle very sensitive data, computational/memory requirements aren't high but data integrity and confidentiality is.

So, again, go for a solution which will retrieve security updates for the expected life of the machine.

There should be R740 available refurbished, are you bound to Servershop24 or open for other vendors as well?
I made good experience with Serverschmiede, and often you can cto refurbished servers.

Serverschmiede.com GmbH

Vertrieb & Konzeption von refurbished Enterprise Server & Storagelösungen im Business Umfeld - maßgeschneiderte, wiederaufgearbeitete Server & mehr

www.serverschmiede.com