TrueNAS Desktop Specs

[mbernard7]

I found the TrueNAS software recently and I think it's awesome, even though I still have a lot to learn! In that regards, I have a few questions I wanted to see if I could get some help with. First, I’m planning on installing TruNAS on a Dell Precision Tower 5910. I’m not sure the sizes of the storage drives at this time but it’ll probably be 2-3 1TB drives. Second, this will be for a small company to share office documents between employees.

1. Do I have to have ECC memory? I know it is preferred but I’m trying to keep the cost down to justifying not purchasing a nice Dell NAS.

2. Can I install the TrueNAS OS on an SSD drive? I know some early spec said that it could be installed on a USB flash drive but then that was changed. My desktop doesn’t have NVMe or M2 connections and since a standard magnetic HDD isn’t preferred, would an SSD drive work? Here is the drive I was going to purchase: https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/250277/SanDisk-SSD-PLUS-480GB-Internal-Solid/#Specs

3. If the drive with the TrueNAS OS on it crashed, would the storage drives with the data on it remain uncorrupted? I have watched a lot of videos and some people have said that they messed up the installation and the OS crashed after a few days. I want to ensure that my data can be recovered if the OS crashes.

4. Which virtual machine (Virtual Box or VMWare) would be the best version to install TrueNAS so I can tinker and test before installing it on an actual system?

5. I have dug through ALL the support links on the home page but can anyone suggest a good place to learn TureNAS in more detail? I have watched a ton of videos and most or good but sometimes I get conflicting information. I wasn't sure if some had a great channel that they could share.

Thanks for the help. I’m excited to find the software and can’t wait to use it.

 

[rvassar]

I found the TrueNAS software recently and I think it's awesome, even though I still have a lot to learn! In that regards, I have a few questions I wanted to see if I could get some help with. First, I’m planning on installing TruNAS on a Dell Precision Tower 5910. I’m not sure the sizes of the storage drives at this time but it’ll probably be 2-3 1TB drives. Second, this will be for a small company to share office documents between employees.

1. Do I have to have ECC memory? I know it is preferred but I’m trying to keep the cost down to justifying not purchasing a nice Dell NAS.

The 5810 (is there a 5910?) is essentially server grade hardware, with PCIe x16 slots for graphics cards. ECC is highly recommended, and I believe that is all that unit can use. I think it only takes registered DIMM's.

2. Can I install the TrueNAS OS on an SSD drive? I know some early spec said that it could be installed on a USB flash drive but then that was changed. My desktop doesn’t have NVMe or M2 connections and since a standard magnetic HDD isn’t preferred, would an SSD drive work? Here is the drive I was going to purchase: https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/250277/SanDisk-SSD-PLUS-480GB-Internal-Solid/#Specs

Yes. 480Gb is major overkill. I run on a mirrored pair of 60Gb SSD's for boot devices, and they're barely used. Configuring a 480Gb unit would waste ~450Gb of Flash.

3. If the drive with the TrueNAS OS on it crashed, would the storage drives with the data on it remain uncorrupted? I have watched a lot of videos and some people have said that they messed up the installation and the OS crashed after a few days. I want to ensure that my data can be recovered if the OS crashes.

The datastore pools are supposed to remain intact. But "uncorrupted" is a loaded term. ZFS is one of the very best non-clustered file systems at preserving data integrity. You can save the TrueNAS config, reinstall and import the data store pools and setup quite trivially. You should actually try this before going into production.

4. Which virtual machine (Virtual Box or VMWare) would be the best version to install TrueNAS so I can tinker and test before installing it on an actual system?

I would probably go with VMWare here, but... Never tried it, so take that answer with a grain of salt.

 

[Cloudified]

1. You can use whatever memory your system is compatible with, but ECC is recommended for any NAS.

2. Anything bigger than 250GB would be a waste on the boot drive. It cannot be used for storage and only keeps the TrueNAS OS and config files.

3. Your data located in your pools should be fine and can be imported to a new boot image of TrueNAS. (make sure to backup a copy of your working config).

4. I ran it on VMware Fusion for Mac just to get used to it. It would be the same as spinning a VM under VMware Workstation for Windows. Just remember that you will need to add additional virtual disks for storage under VMware for the data pools. I added a bunch just to play around with the different ZFS options (mirrors, RAIDZ, etc.).

5. This is the best place to come for support and to learn since it's a community-based support system (exception: enterprise customers.

 

[NugentS]

I would suggest that anything much bigger than 40GB is wasted as a boot pool.
I use 16GB M.2's to boot one NAS from - and they have plenty of space providing I don't keep too many back versions on them as well as the current version.

 

[mbernard7]

The 5810 (is there a 5910?) is essentially server grade hardware, with PCIe x16 slots for graphics cards. ECC is highly recommended, and I believe that is all that unit can use. I think it only takes registered DIMM's.


Yes. 480Gb is major overkill. I run on a mirrored pair of 60Gb SSD's for boot devices, and they're barely used. Configuring a 480Gb unit would waste ~450Gb of Flash.

The datastore pools are supposed to remain intact. But "uncorrupted" is a loaded term. ZFS is one of the very best non-clustered file systems at preserving data integrity. You can save the TrueNAS config, reinstall and import the data store pools and setup quite trivially. You should actually try this before going into production.



I would probably go with VMWare here, but... Never tried it, so take that answer with a grain of salt.

Yea, I meant to write 5810. I accidentally fat finger the keys. Thanks for the rest of he information.