XCP-NG and TrueNas setup

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
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Hi, I am in the process of doing a system refresh on my office servers. I am currently running on Proxmox but haven’t been happy with some of the performance and its web interface timing out all the time. I started down the road with a test setup of XCP-NG and am happy with it, so time to move over to a production system.

My question is how best to setup TrueNas. I have used Truenas in the past but not for VM storage. First would be TrueNas Core or Scale. Our storage requirements doesn’t grow much so don’t see a need for a while to expand beyond the space I have. With that, how best to setup the Vdev’s.
This is going to be a clean install. I have 16 bay server. I have 8 SSD (800GB) that I can put in now, then once proxmox is fully shutdown, i will have 8 more (960GB) SSD’s that I can put in. Or I can go with 1TB enterprise spinning disk. I then have 4 M.2 WD Red 500GB drives that will be on PCI riser boards. I figure one of those will be the install drive. I do have another 32GB M.2 on a riser board that I can use as the install drive if that makes more sense.

Network is all 10G. The server will have two networks. one for storage network and one as front facing.

The XCP-NG servers (5 total) have 10G network. again, one for storage network and the other as front facing.

Thank you in advanced for your help.

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I would go down the Scale route, and do not install any truenas apps on it.

Scale is fine for smb , nfs or isci shares.

Have a look at these videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTo1F3LUhbE

As for vdev, I would create 8 SSD in RaidZ2 - gives you some redunancy. SSD will be faster than the rust drives.

Do not use rust and SSD in the same vdev, create seperate vdev for each

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Do not even use SATA 3gbps and 6gbps drives in the same pool, it will default to running everything at 3gbps.

There are ways to set up a pool such that you can add to it later (the 8 now plus 8 more later), I would figure that out before I jumped. There have been a few posts about this in the forums here. I’d detail the info but I don’t really remember.

I’m mixed on Scale vs Core, Scale is still technically a beta or preview version, where Core is solid. I’d probably go with Core for a production system right now.

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Tom has a video on Core vs Scale - 4 months old