TrueNAS Hardware Review

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Hi all,

First time posting, so apologies if this is not the right area.

I have some experience with building computers, running VM’s and managing servers but this will be my first TrueNAS build and my first experience with ZFS so I was hoping to get anther set of eyes to look at what I’m currently considering for my build.

The primary purpose of the build will be to house virtual hard disk drives for my VM’s. I run Hyper-V (only because I need transcoding and it was the only hypervisor I could get to work with my current Graphics card) currently and I’m looking at using iSCSI to via a 10 GB direct fibre link between my host machine and the TureNAS box. Below is an outline of the gear I’m looking to purchase and how I’m thinking I’ll lay out my drives.

  • Gigabyte B550 AORUS Elite v2 (Motherboard)
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (CPU)
  • Crucial 32 GB DDR 3200MHz (RAM, motherboard supports 128 and I plan to put 128 in but as a starting point I’m hoping that 32 will be enough just to cut down on setup cost)
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Low Profile (over kill but I’m wanting to future proof the system for other use cases)
  • Dell H310 6 GBPS HBA (IT Mode)
  • 4 x Samsung 980 500GB NVMe (I was going to go with standard SSD’s here but the supplier I use has a special on and the NVMe is cheaper). 2 of these will be used for the OS and then anther 2 will be used for sLog drive.
  • 7 x Seagate EXOS 14TB 256MB Cache 7200rpm (second hand but recertified by Seagate). I plan to not plug in all 7 and have 1 as a spare then running the other 6 as an Z2 config.

I’ve also got a PCI NVMe expansion card, a 4 x ethernet port 1GB card and a 2 x fibre port card but I don’t think the details of these will affect anything (let me know if I’m wrong).

I was hoping to setup a d duplication drive as well but given I plan on using iSCSI I thought that there would be no point to this?

Final question, for some of the content that I will be sharing over the network am I ok to setup a handful of iSCSI targets and present it directly to the VM or should I create the shares directly on the NAS. Just because I want everything to come from the VM’s I’m hoping that a handful of smaller iSCSI targets will be ok.

Any feed back is appreciated and thank you for your time.

2

Leaving my opinion for Hard drive brand out of this, buying “used” drives alone would concern me. Especially as I’m going to guess, this is a situation where you have no warranty through the OEM, its only through the seller? (This is the way many of those deals work). Make sure you are aware of all the caveats of those refurbished drives before going that route.

3

Yeah I was a little concerned about that as well but when I looked closer I found that the warranty was from the manufactor as they are the once who have recertified the drives, but this is also why I’m looking at purchasing a spare.

4

Are those drives CMR/PMR or SMR? SMR and Truenas do not play nicely together under certain circumstances: WD Red SMR vs CMR Tested Avoid Red SMR - ServeTheHome
https://kb.synology.com/en-id/DSM/tutorial/PMR_SMR_hard_disk_drives