Question: My first TrueNAS will be on a Intel S1200BTL , 6 sata ports (4 3gb/s 2 6gb/s), a built in hardware raid with a AHCI mode.
If I use the onboard sata can I move the drives to new hardware and retain function down the road? Should I use PCIE HBA’s instead?
I have four 1tb SSD’s and two 4tb HDD. My plan is one pool, two mirrored vdevs’s with the four 1tb ssd’s and another pool with one 4tb HDD for backup. I will backup the backup with an external HDD and back blaze.
I also have a Dell R710 but I was going to use that for a XCP server. Maybe I should just use that for the TrueNAS?
I truly appreciate guidance. I’ve been putting this off for 5 years but my family pictures and videos are a mess and scattered over various old hardware and it’s freaking me out.
If I use the onboard sata can I move the drives to new hardware and retain function down the road?
Yes, but it will be a lot easier if you don’t use the built in hardware raid on that motherboard.
I have four 1tb SSD’s and two 4tb HDD. My plan is one pool, two mirrored vdevs’s with the four 1tb ssd’s and another pool with one 4tb HDD for backup
I am not sure that counts as a real backup. In my opinion a backup means another data copy on a different physical machine. I back up my TrueNAS to my Synology, also to an instance of Openmedia vault running on a mini PC and a copy to AWS Glacier. So if my TrueNAS box blows up I don’t need to rebuild it before being able to access my data on a different platform.
I also have a Dell R710 but I was going to use that for a XCP server. Maybe I should just use that for the TrueNAS
I am not sure it makes a difference. For just plain storage purposes, TrueNAS doesn’t really need a lot of CPU horsepower in my experience. But it does benefit from plentiful RAM. You didn’t really say what you would have for RAM in either machine.
The S1200BTL is kind of older hardware though, and I am guessing that maybe the R710 is as well? Older hardware, especially server grade stuff, eats up lots of electricity. You might want to consider going with something newer and smaller for your NAS, just to get a lower electric bill.
Thank you for the detailed response. The R710 has 24gb of ram using 2gb sticks the S1200 has 8gb and my test run of TrueNAS on it showed it was not happy with 8gb. They are both old. I will find an HBA and roll with the S1200. I will come up with a better backup strategy.
Technically there is no need for an HBA if there are enough ports on the motherboard for you, just don’t enable the hardware raid feature. But I just noticed that 4 of them are the old 3gb/s standard, so yeah, an inexpensive HBA is probably worthwhile. Or even an ASMedia 1166 based PCI card, which can be super inexpensive. Be sure to get more memory for the S1200 as well.
I’ve been researching HBA’s, what a rabbit hole that is. I don’t mind spending more on that since I can use it in the future machine. Should I go with LSI and maybe 8 port?
There’s nothing wrong with LSI, but I have no idea which model to point you towards. In my mind you want a newer generation chipset but you also don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, nor do you want one that generates a ton of heat. Maybe a LSI 9300-8i. See if you can one that has already been flashed for IT mode. If it comes with cables, even better. I think this guy is probably pretty good. I follow his Youtube channel. the Art of Server | eBay Stores
The Art of Server guy is no joke. He quickly answer my questions on ebay and when I told him my build he mentioned I better get a fan installed. My case front is all 5.25 bays. I bought a LSI 9302 8i with cables. I feel much better about my build going forward and this card can move to a new home when I have funds.
Can you help clarify another detail. If I have 16gb memory and a pool of two 4tb HDD’s, If I add a 1tb mirror ssd slog, will the slog fill up because the pool is so much slower?
I saw a 3yr old video yesterday from Tom that explains how the slog doesn’t need to be very large; only a few GB. I was hoping the slog would fill up while the hdds slowly took in the data.
Now I’m thinking I should have my main storage be 4 1tb SSD’s and build a second machine as my onsite replication with the two 4tb drives. Get a couple 4tb drives for offsite backups. This would all be a lot easier if I just threw money at it, but that isn’t an option. I really feel like I’m overthinking this whole thing. Maybe because I’m paranoid of loosing all this data.
So speaking from some experience here, specifically around the R710, they can be made to run TrueNAS. If you have the SFF model, you will have 8 external 2.5 bays to use, the LFF will give you 6 external 3.5.
When I set up a LFF one, I used the 6 drives for storage, and got an adapter to put a SSD in where the optical drive sits. But you can just as happily use 1 or 2 of the front drives.
Regarding the HBA, if the server has the old PERC6, you’ll want to try upgrade it to a H200 flashed in IT mode. If it comes with a H700, have a look and see if you can find a good guide for flashing it to IT mode. The H200 or H700 will run at 6GB/S instead of 3GB/S, the R710s on-board SATA is only 3GB/S, but with an SSD its fast enough to operate TrueNAS itself.
A thing to keep in mind (Not important, but if you are not aware could make you question/worry) is when the controllers are in IT mode, the drive status LED will not function.
The system will function for storage, but Apps will have a hard time especially from the spinning rust. They are also a little noisy and power hungry, but an adventure to get functional.
Billy, if you are concerned with data integrity, I would be careful to only use SSDs that have power loss protection for a data VDEV, and to be sure to use mirrors and or a raidz setup. What kind of SSDs do you have?
How much storage space do you need? Your 4 1TB SSDs could be put into two mirrored VDEVs yielding 2TB of usable space, or into a RaidZ1 giving 3 TB of usable space. RaidZ is always slower than mirrored VDEVS, just bear that in mind. I know you don’t want to throw money at this, but 4TB spinning disks can be had pretty inexpensively. I frequently see refurbished 4TB SAS drives (which you can use with your new HBA) for under $50, same for white label SATA hard drives. Used 4TB drives can often be found for $25 or less. At that cost, buy a few extra, run smart tests on all of them, and pick the ones with the best health for your array.
I only need about 1.5tb of storage currently. My big issue is I have data stored over several machines and I’m sure 1tb of duplicate files. I glad you mentioned RaidZ is slower I was just about to setup three 1tb in a RaidZ1. With the four 1tb, I’ll use one as boot for now and start my pool with 1 mirrored VDEV with two 1tb ssds. The SSD’s are nothing fancy. WD Blue SA510’s. Once I get data off of two other machines I can add their 1tb ssd’s to make another mirrored VDEV for this pool.
Sounds like a lot more work then just buy a bunch of drives and a NAS.
I just realized, I haven’t even spoke of my use case.
I need to move data from multiple PCs that will rarely be edited. Family pictures and videos. The bulk of the work flow will be users viewing files and nothing more than that.
I think you will be well served by mirrored VDEVs. Use the drives you have, just make sure you have a UPS in front of your NAS machine to protect your data. One SSD VDEV will likely saturate a 2.5gb network connection, so unless you are stepping up to 10gbe or higher networking, I wouldn’t worry about the speed of the pool too much. Good luck on your build.