Hey all,
I have a 512GB SSD for my boot drive. I know I could repartition it to use most of it as a cache drive.. but not really worried about doing that at this point.
My m/b has slots for 2 more NVMe SSDs. I also have 8 SATA 3 slots, of which 5 will be used for HDDs. That leaves 3 open for SSDs.
I have a 250GB SATA3 SSD just sitting unused. It's older.. Samsung 850, but barely used.
I was also looking to buy an NVMe SSD drive IF it makes sense to do so and the 250GB may not be enough OR maybe I would use that drive for other stuff...
I know there are a variety of ways you can configure TrueNAS to utilize drives (other than the main pool.. in my case 5 HDDs).
What I am wondering is.. would there be any benefit in adding both the 250GB SATA3 SSD AND an additional 1 (or even 2) NVMe SSDs.. or more so.. HOW much of a difference in terms of how I use it.
SO.. I am using TrueNAS for a few things like most people. First and foremost as a primary redundant backup of family photos/videos, and some documents. I DO have a 2nd Synology NAS with 32TB storage.. which originally I got to handle large RAW video files of sports of my kids I used to do. Now that that is over.. I wanted to make use of this Threadripper workstation (gen 1, 16 cores) that was just sitting around for 2 years unused.. and I built myself a 10u network rack for all my network gear.. so figured.. rather than this old desktop system I have in use right now for UNRAID (which I discovered is NOT what I wanted).. make use of a more capable server that is not in use. The reason is, I am ripping a ton of 4K blurays, and I want utmost quality for my main home theater playback (plan on getting the next gen nvidia Shield when it comes out.. IF it comes out).. but also have a few kids (college, etc) that want to watch movies from time to time so I enable remote access to them only and they will need much "leaner" versions of the videos. So I will need the ability to transcode a lot of 50GB+ 4K HDR videos in to much smaller stream capable optimized versions. Hence.. the good fit for this threadripper 16 core system.
Now that that is out of the way.. I don't store stuff that often.. so write speed being slow is fine for me. Hence why I think RAIDZ1 is the right path for the 5 drives. BUT, because we have a few devices that sometimes are all streaming from Plex.. I wanted to make sure that the Plex server, and TrueNAS too, can handle the performance needs when necessary. With that in mind, hence this long post with context as to why I am asking this.. I am unsure of what SSDs will add and if 2, 3 or more would make things a lot better, or not worth the added cost.
SO.. I am OK with buying a 500GB NVMe SSD drive to add to the m/b 2nd slot.. and I could even consider a 3rd one IF it made sense. The question I guess is.. how to use it.. and how much benefit does it add?
I ALSO plan to run some VMs on this machine.. e.g. as a hobbyist developer who likes to mess around with Kubernetes, etc.. I was thinking when this server isn't transcoding stuff, I could utilize TrueNAS and VMs to run some K8s nodes, and a message broker. AS well, HomeLab server.
So.. would having 2 SSDs (outside the boot one) be good and use one for cache and the other for storing VMs/HomeLab/etc? Or is there a better way to configure all this with 2/3/4 SSDs to optimize overall performance?
Thanks.
I have a 512GB SSD for my boot drive. I know I could repartition it to use most of it as a cache drive.. but not really worried about doing that at this point.
My m/b has slots for 2 more NVMe SSDs. I also have 8 SATA 3 slots, of which 5 will be used for HDDs. That leaves 3 open for SSDs.
I have a 250GB SATA3 SSD just sitting unused. It's older.. Samsung 850, but barely used.
I was also looking to buy an NVMe SSD drive IF it makes sense to do so and the 250GB may not be enough OR maybe I would use that drive for other stuff...
I know there are a variety of ways you can configure TrueNAS to utilize drives (other than the main pool.. in my case 5 HDDs).
What I am wondering is.. would there be any benefit in adding both the 250GB SATA3 SSD AND an additional 1 (or even 2) NVMe SSDs.. or more so.. HOW much of a difference in terms of how I use it.
SO.. I am using TrueNAS for a few things like most people. First and foremost as a primary redundant backup of family photos/videos, and some documents. I DO have a 2nd Synology NAS with 32TB storage.. which originally I got to handle large RAW video files of sports of my kids I used to do. Now that that is over.. I wanted to make use of this Threadripper workstation (gen 1, 16 cores) that was just sitting around for 2 years unused.. and I built myself a 10u network rack for all my network gear.. so figured.. rather than this old desktop system I have in use right now for UNRAID (which I discovered is NOT what I wanted).. make use of a more capable server that is not in use. The reason is, I am ripping a ton of 4K blurays, and I want utmost quality for my main home theater playback (plan on getting the next gen nvidia Shield when it comes out.. IF it comes out).. but also have a few kids (college, etc) that want to watch movies from time to time so I enable remote access to them only and they will need much "leaner" versions of the videos. So I will need the ability to transcode a lot of 50GB+ 4K HDR videos in to much smaller stream capable optimized versions. Hence.. the good fit for this threadripper 16 core system.
Now that that is out of the way.. I don't store stuff that often.. so write speed being slow is fine for me. Hence why I think RAIDZ1 is the right path for the 5 drives. BUT, because we have a few devices that sometimes are all streaming from Plex.. I wanted to make sure that the Plex server, and TrueNAS too, can handle the performance needs when necessary. With that in mind, hence this long post with context as to why I am asking this.. I am unsure of what SSDs will add and if 2, 3 or more would make things a lot better, or not worth the added cost.
SO.. I am OK with buying a 500GB NVMe SSD drive to add to the m/b 2nd slot.. and I could even consider a 3rd one IF it made sense. The question I guess is.. how to use it.. and how much benefit does it add?
I ALSO plan to run some VMs on this machine.. e.g. as a hobbyist developer who likes to mess around with Kubernetes, etc.. I was thinking when this server isn't transcoding stuff, I could utilize TrueNAS and VMs to run some K8s nodes, and a message broker. AS well, HomeLab server.
So.. would having 2 SSDs (outside the boot one) be good and use one for cache and the other for storing VMs/HomeLab/etc? Or is there a better way to configure all this with 2/3/4 SSDs to optimize overall performance?
Thanks.