Hi all,
This is my first post, so thank you in advance all for the advice!
I’m looking to build a TrueNAS Scale NAS for my home lab, and I have several questions. Currently, I’m running a Synology DS1511+ that is setup as an ISCSI target for my home server. I run virtual servers for labbing purposes, but I also use it to store backups of my other PCs, pictures, and documents. The Synology has been rock solid and I haven’t had any issue, but I would like to upgrade to a 10 gig NAS so that I can have faster and more responsive VMs, as well as break away from being tied permanently into Synology. I’ve looked at TrueNAS Core and Scale, and I think that Scale may be a better fit because of the Kubernetes/Docker support.
The build I have in mind is a:
- AMD Ryzen 3950X (I have this as a spare so I’m repurposing it)
- ASRock Rack X570D4U-2L2T (not tied to this but I like the IPMI feature so looking for recommendations here)
- SilverStone Technology CS351 (looking to keep the footprint as small as possible)
- 64 gigs of RAM (To start with maybe add more? Maybe ECC maybe not?)
- 5 drives (looking to repurpose the ones from my Synology)
So my first question is, does this build make sense? Should I use ECC or maybe it doesn’t matter?
Second, I’ve read that there have been a lot of weird issues with TrueNAS and Ryzen processors, do these still exist? I read they can mostly be overcome by disabling the C states, but that seemed to only apply to Ryzen 2x and 1x. Is the ASRock mobo worth the cost or should I just go with a regular consumer board? I’m not looking to add a GPU currently so the IPMI video output is one the biggest perks for me. And finally, is this even a good idea or should I just stick to Synology?
I still have not done a lot of testing with TrueNAS Scale but because it’s based on Debian it should work fine with Ryzen. But overall Scale still does not have the performance that you can get with TrueNAS core. I don’t thing the ECC matters that much.
IPMI is a nice thing to have, can’t comment on the other stuff.
I’d look at SuperMicro boards, they have some Ryzen based boards.
Holy smokes! Thanks for the reply @LTS_Tom. Just want to say that your content on YouTube is amazing and has helped me many times at work.
I watched the video where you do the performance comparison but I was left a bit confused. I know overall Core had better performance than Scale but I didn’t exactly understand as whole what that meant. Obviously different storage benchmarks will provide different results, but I guess in the grand scheme I was wondering what percentage faster Core is compared to Scale.
Since I’m not using either version for a full enterprise production system, do you think that trading the performance of Core for the compatibility of Scale is worth it in this use case?
Thanks @Greg_E, I did checkout SuperMicro, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find any Micro-ATX boards that support Ryzen on X570 or B550. I know it’s kind of a unique scenario, but I live in a small house and I’m tight on space, so a Micro-ATX based build gives me the compactness I need while still having enough PCIe for any future expansion.
Sorry, I didn’t even think about micro sized. They used to make a few small computers like that, but I didn’t see any when I was looking to build a Truenas for a coworker. How about some of the HP Micro towers as used, you can often get them with about 12 cores and some amount of RAM. I know you have the processor, but if you can get a complete system ready for drives for only a few hundred dollars, it might be worth doing. And then it would be intel and you know the software would work correctly.
Not this specific device, but they make a series of things like this HP ProLiant 658553-001 Micro Server Tower Turion II - BRAND NEW in Orig Mfg Pkng 886111743308 | eBay
So I decided to go against the ASRock Rack X570D4U-2L2T and instead chose the ASRock X570M PRO4 (Micro-ATX). Read a bunch of reviews and it almost seems like the same motherboard except for the IPMI and 10 gig. I’m going to get around this issue by using a super old NVIDIA Quadro I have that still works. Hopefully, after I get TrueNas all set up I won’t ever have to use a graphics card again (unless I want to).
The one thing I was wondering is if I need an HBA card? I’ve seen a ton of builds for TrueNas that use HBAs and, much like ECC RAM, they seem to be something that’s more of a choice rather than a need. Any thoughts or suggestions?