Ideal TrueNAS configuration on bare metal to supplement existing QNAP based NAS.

[bcollie]

I have a QNAP 569L with 5 x 2 TB WD Red drives in Raid 5 = 7.21 TB 'capacity', 5.21 TB in use.
This has been working well for many, many years but really needs a 'backup' - or two, for 3-2-1.

This is obviously where TrueNAS comes in.

My HomeLab so far is:

• Dell T7820 (2x18 C; 128 GB ECC) with Proxmox for VMs
• Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H i7-4790K (4 C; 32 GB non ECC) with Proxmox for VMs
• 'Spare' Antec case with old Pentium type board but good 500W PSU; 6 x 3.5" bays
  • Option 1: Upgrade this chassis for TrueNAS - if I can find a suitable mobo + CPU + ECC RAM
  • Option 2: Purchase a used PC with suitable mobo etc and 'sufficient' SATA ports and drive bays

So the immediate TrueNAS question is - would Raidz1 be sufficient protection, given that the same data will be on the QNAP NAS - with a copy on Cloud (OneDrive)?

I am thinking to use 'n' x 4 TB WD Red 3.5" HDD for the TrueNAS Scale bare metal.

Naturally I need to squeeze the best value from the TrueNAS venture, so:

1. Which Raidz number do I budget for?
2. Hence, what is the value 'n'?

 

[Ericloewe]

So the immediate TrueNAS question is - would Raidz1 be sufficient protection, given that the same data will be on the QNAP NAS - with a copy on Cloud (OneDrive)?

Nobody but you can answer that. You need to decide whether the risk is low enough for your purposes. That said, most people [Citation Needed] are of the opinion that RAIDZ1 (same goes for RAID5 of any kind) is too risky for their applications as the loss of any one disk puts some data at risk of even a single bad sector leading to data loss, never mind the risk of a second, outright disk failure.

 

[Ericloewe]

I am thinking to use 'n' x 4 TB WD Red 3.5" HDD for the TrueNAS Scale bare metal.

Two red flags:

1. Why specifically 4 TB? That's not inherently a problem, but there are real costs to running more disks rather than larger disks. It's not clear how much storage you're actually looking for (7.2 TiB / 8 TB? Plus 20% free space margin?).
2. Careful with the WD Reds... Regular Reds in small capacities are SMR disks, which would place you in a world of pain. The CMR versions are Red Plus, not to be confused with Red Pro, which are 7200 RPM.

 

[bcollie]

Nobody but you can answer that. You need to decide whether the risk is low enough for your purposes. That said, most people [Citation Needed] are of the opinion that RAIDZ1 (same goes for RAID5 of any kind) is too risky for their applications as the loss of any one disk puts some data at risk of even a single bad sector leading to data loss, never mind the risk of a second, outright disk failure.

Ok, so I can see the logic that multiple instances of 'risky' data does not equal 'safe' data - the Swiss Cheese Conundrum.

 

[bcollie]

Two red flags:

1. Why specifically 4 TB? That's not inherently a problem, but there are real costs to running more disks rather than larger disks. It's not clear how much storage you're actually looking for (7.2 TiB / 8 TB? Plus 20% free space margin?).
2. Careful with the WD Reds... Regular Reds in small capacities are SMR disks, which would place you in a world of pain. The CMR versions are Red Plus, not to be confused with Red Pro, which are 7200 RPM.

Sorry, I skipped the detail.

I was originally thinking of 'Western Digital WD Red Pro 4TB WD4003FFBX 3.5in NAS Hard Drive' or
'Western Digital WD 4TB Red Plus 3.5" SATA HDD, WD40EFPX' (cheaper but only 3, not 5 yr warranty).

I'm thinking of about 10TB usable capacity on the TrueNAS - some data like ripped CDs already have their physical 'backup', remaining data (pics etc) will have the QNAP 569L (7.2 TB capacity) as the 2nd copy.

I am now working through the 'ZFS Capacity Calculator' for the storage/price sweet-spot with different size drives, as you suggest.

Still grappling with an appropriate h/w platform - mobo etc upgrade in old PC case, or a 'server' style chassis with all the required (but old) kit already installed.