I have little experience with ZFS or TruNAS (other than a previously failed attempt to do this), but I'd like to build a ZFS file server for home & two for work. I'm looking for any guidance you can provide.
I thought I start with a test rig, using what I currently have:
- Rosewill RSV-L4500 15 Bay Rackmount Case
- Dual Intel Xeon X5680, Motherboard, 24GB ECC Ram, Power supply
- 10x 16TBGB HDD (used), 2x Samsung 128TBGB 840 (used), numerous Optane P1600X M.2 (still in box)
What I think I still need:
- HBA or 2
- 5x 16TBGB HHD, maybe as a backup pool
- PCIe NVMe Carrier Card (if I use the optane)
For starters (testing), I think I'll setup
- 1x SSD for Op Sys
- Perhaps Optane for SLOG and/or SSD for L2ARC
- 10x 16TBGB HHD as 4 pair mirrored VDEV with 2 Hot Spares for primary storage (64TBGB total)
- 5x 16TBGB in RAIDz1 to experiment with ZFS replication as a backup pool (64TBGB Total)*
*All my data is currently on several 8TBGB externals using DrivePool/Snapraid, which I'll keep as a backup also.
I'll probably start with TruNAS Core. What I'd eventually like to be able to do run a couple Windows VMs and Linux VMs for various server software such as Blue Iris (not as a workstation). I'm not sure I can pull that off with this hardware, or if TruNAS Core is the right OS for this either. Maybe TruNAS Scale is a better option, or even a bare metal hypervisor with virtualized TrueNAS
Eventually (sooner rather than later), if all goes well, I intend to purchase additional, newer hardware but I wanted to test this out before spending anymore money
Is this a reasonable approach? Is the hardware satisfactory? Any suggestions?
Also, what happens if I physically remove the HHDs in a pool, and put them in another ZFS based file server? For example, If I physically transfer the 5x HHDs backup pool to another ZFS based machine (or blow away the OS on the existing machine), will I be able to read those drives in the new machine?
I thought I start with a test rig, using what I currently have:
- Rosewill RSV-L4500 15 Bay Rackmount Case
- Dual Intel Xeon X5680, Motherboard, 24GB ECC Ram, Power supply
- 10x 16TB
What I think I still need:
- HBA or 2
- 5x 16TB
- PCIe NVMe Carrier Card (if I use the optane)
For starters (testing), I think I'll setup
- 1x SSD for Op Sys
- Perhaps Optane for SLOG and/or SSD for L2ARC
- 10x 16TB
- 5x 16TB
*All my data is currently on several 8TB
I'll probably start with TruNAS Core. What I'd eventually like to be able to do run a couple Windows VMs and Linux VMs for various server software such as Blue Iris (not as a workstation). I'm not sure I can pull that off with this hardware, or if TruNAS Core is the right OS for this either. Maybe TruNAS Scale is a better option, or even a bare metal hypervisor with virtualized TrueNAS
Eventually (sooner rather than later), if all goes well, I intend to purchase additional, newer hardware but I wanted to test this out before spending anymore money
Is this a reasonable approach? Is the hardware satisfactory? Any suggestions?
Also, what happens if I physically remove the HHDs in a pool, and put them in another ZFS based file server? For example, If I physically transfer the 5x HHDs backup pool to another ZFS based machine (or blow away the OS on the existing machine), will I be able to read those drives in the new machine?
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