Hardware Advice: whether to buy a retail box or use old hardware

[PopPop]

Hi all,
I am on the cusp of a decision and would like the opinion of people who have been doing this for a while. I am going to make a move to a TrueNAS storage solution in one of two ways.
1. Buy a TrueNAS Mini X+ 5+2 ready built retail solution or
2. Use a computer that will be soon decommissioned and therefor available for repurposing.

My question is will the old hardware be suitable for the purpose or should I go the retail route?

The old hardware consists of:
An 8 internal bay CoolerMaster case... so plenty of room for 5 HDD and 2 SSDs (It also has 2 Hot Swap bays in the front)
An ASUS Sabretooth 990FX MOBO in flawless condition.
AMD FX8350 8 core processor. It has run continuously for 9+ years without a hitch.
32GB DDR3 Crucial RAM memory

Like I said this stuff is 9+ years old and has not missed a lick. The only reason for the decommissioning is that I am building a new system to replace this admittedly ageing hardware and rather than see it waste away in the closet I thought why not use it. Plus it is already put together all I need to do is add some new HDD and it's good to go.

So there is the situation and the question. ANY suggestions or comments will be most appreciated. I have played with a test instance of TrueNAS so I feel somewhat comfortable with the software. Help with the hardware that's the ticket!

Hey thanks in advance for any help, I really do appreciate it.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Since you have the hardware, why not give a try? Depending on the number of drives a new PSU might be a good idea. And we don't know your use-case(s), so the performance aspect is unknown.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Assuming it's a R0, might have trouble with the onboard RAID controller and Realtek NIC, so be prepared to install a HBA controller and Intel NIC. Still might be worth kicking the tires with TrueNAS CORE or SCALE.

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[Tony-1971]

Hello,

I don't think that the AMD FX8350 support ECC RAM: so I think is better to buy a TrueNAS Mini.

Best Regards,
Antonio

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Hello,

I don't think that the AMD FX8350 support ECC RAM: so I think is better to buy a TrueNAS Mini.

Best Regards,
Antonio

That would't stop me from using it in a non-mission critical application.

 

[Evertb1]

That would't stop me from using it in a non-mission critical application.

I know that there are more people of that opinion. But I always wonder why go to the trouble learning al the ins and outs of TrueNAS, not exactly plug and play, and then not take fully advantage of al the good things ZFS has to offer by disregarding some of the more important requirements and recommendations?

 

[KrisBee]

Well, there are refs on the web with users saying FX 8320e + ECC on Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 works. The ASUS R2.0 manual say it supports unbuffered ECC RAM and the BIOS has entry to enable ECC mode. I still have a ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 AM3+ board that has the same BIOS ECC mode setting and definitely worked with and fully supported ECC memory as shown in the demidecode when running linux. I'd certainly prefer to have ECC memory than not.

My concern is the added Jmicon or ASmedia chip for those extra two SATA ports. Not sure they'd be supported or would trust those when running TrueNAS.

Had you consider s/hand servergrade parts, e.eg supermicro m/board + xeon cpu + ECC memory in the same case?

 

[PopPop]

Much thanks for the responses folks. You have given me many things to consider and ponder. I will have to do some deep research on some of your comments to see if my HW will, actually, support EEC RAM for instance. I don't know but rest assured I will find out. Thanks again.
PopEye

 

[bfarnam]

From the FreeBSD Hardware Compatibility List:

"The ahci(4) driver supports AHCI compatible controllers having PCI class 1 (mass storage), subclass 6 (SATA) and programming interface 1 (AHCI).

Also, in cooperation with atamarvell and atajmicron drivers of ata(4), it supports AHCI part of legacy-PATA + AHCI-SATA combined controllers, such as JMicron JMB36x and Marvell 88SE61xx."

and

"The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, RTL8168, RTL810xE and RTL8111 based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:"

So the SATA and NIC will probably be ok as long as their isn't anything else on the MOBO that isn't supported. I would try it with a USB stick for testing (I wouldn't use a USB stick for production). The big issue is the ECC ram support. I personally wouldn't run a NAS without it, but honestly almost every "canned" NAS consumer appliance out there doesn't use ECC ram anyway. This is the reason I swapped to FreeNAS/TrueNAS from a Netgear appliance.

 

[PopPop]

Hi again folks,
So after doing some research and looking at the Sabretooth 990fx version I have, I discovered that it is a Rev. 1. Not a Rev. 2, so I think from what you all said the Sabretooth 990fx Rev. 2 will support EEC Memory. What I found said that the Rev. 1 will not, so that rules out ECC Memory. Where does that leave me? I am not sure I understand the necessity of ECC Memory over Non-ECC. If someone could give me the rundown on that I would appreciate it.
On the Realtek Nic, it is a 10-100-1000 MB/s nic. I think I read that TrueNAS can communicate at faster speeds but I am not sure about that and I can't find where I read it. So I am lost on that front, although it would be easy enough to add another, faster nic. (I have a 1gig internet plan I can squeeze only so much bandwidth out of that.)
And HBA controller I have no, nada, zip, experience with, but I don't see the problem because, well doesn't TrueNAS provide for ZFS Raid? Why would I even need to go through the OB Raid? What am I missing, and I have no doubt whatsoever I am missing something.
As I mentioned in my original post I am just learning the in's and out's of TrueNAS. It has proven to be a challenge for me due to my relatively meager experience. I use the knowledge base documentation rigorously, but am still lacking the true knowledge I need to fully make use of the OS. If someone or two of you could give me some idea of where I would most productively concentrate my research I could make better use of my time. If it turns out that I need it all, just tell me to buckle down and get to it and I will make my best effort. But trimming the edges would help.
By the way all this effort is expressly for storing and serving my EMBY music, movie, and vintage TV programing. Also I will store recorded current TV and movie programing, some documents and picture files, and other various files as needs be. All of the files I hold most dear will be duplicated and stored off the TrueNAS server so in the event of a catastrophic failure not all would be lost. and the option of a retail TrueNAS box remains an option down the road if it is needed.
Hey, thanks again for the advice in advance and I hope all of your computer woes are small ones.

 

[elorimer]

By the way all this effort is expressly for storing and serving my EMBY music, movie, and vintage TV programing. Also I will store recorded current TV and movie programing, some documents and picture files, and other various files as needs be. All of the files I hold most dear will be duplicated and stored off the TrueNAS server so in the event of a catastrophic failure not all would be lost. and the option of a retail TrueNAS box remains an option down the road if it is needed.

This is where you wanted to start. You won't get anyone here to recommend non-ECC memory but there are many who are using non-ECC memory. For me, the starting point is how you are backing up important data, and then how critical data integrity is in your use case. ECC eliminates one source of corruption. For some applications that is necessary, but for me, personally, I don't think media is one of them.

I have two TrueNAS servers (main and backup) out of repurposed things with non-ECC memory being used in very much the same way as you. Over the couple of years I've been fooling with this (I'm just a hobbyist) I've learned a whole lot. In fact, my configuration is now very much different than where I started, and I expect it to continue to evolve. So much so that I wouldn't trust any of the choices I would have made/did make at the outset.

An observation I would make is that the data losses I've experienced were on individual Windows boxes that got so borked I had to wipe them and reinstall from scratch. Having most everything on a server saved my bacon.

So I would encourage you to back up everything, and then give TrueNAS a whirl with your repurposed hardware. When you know more you can rebuild the server.

Last, I don't know if you have calculated the energy cost of having the box on 24/7. That is a beast of a processor and I'm guessing will cost you $15 or $20 a month in electricity. My main system is a fraction of that.

 

[bfarnam]

@PopPop I am as cheap as they come and did not wish to fork out that premium cash for a prebuilt TrueNAS (FreeNAS at the time) box. So I built my own knowing absolutely nothing about ZFS and FreeNAS and just enough to be dangerous with unix/linux.

The learning curve on FreeBSD was more than I bargained for, especially in the FreeNAS/TrueNAS implementation and how the core actually loads on top of the boot OS. For a person that likes to touch and mess with startup config files, this was the biggest challenge, learning hands off.

I chose an older Motherboard but my main requirements were low power consumption, ECC memory, and 10GB ethernet. The older Atom is very low draw, the MoBo supports ECC, and I had to use a Chelsio adapter for the 10Gb connection to my switch. The speed of your public ethernet connection has very little to do with the speed of transferring files to and from the NAS from you local PCs. WiFi 6 can easily saturate a 1Gb connection. And for me I do a wee bit of video transcoding and those files are huge. I prefer to not wait 4 hours for a copy.... LOL