Hi guys, I've spent the last 2 weeks reading page after page of hardware realted thread. There is a lot of information but being completely new to TrueNAS, I'm not sure if I'm headed in the right direction. The last system I built from scratch was probably a Pentium II so I'm rusty.
For starter, I'm trying to replace the following:
Dell Precision T7600, dual E5-2687W, 64 GB RAM, 14TB hard drive running ESXi (1 VM with a NFS share and a few other small test Linux VMs)
Intel NUC Exteme 12 running Proxmox VE (Plex and NZB downloader, Home Assistant, Frigate NAS)
QNAP TS-219P II
The T7600 used to be my main virtualisation machine. However, Plex transcoding was awful so I moved my Media Server to my NUC and then started playing with Home Assistant and Frigate.
I would like to decommission the T7600 to reduce my carbon footprint and rebuild everything on a single machine so that I can get back my NUC for other purposes. I would run TrueNAS Scale native and other VMs on it, hoping to passhtrough the iGPU to Plex and the Coral M.2 to Frigate.
These are my questions right now and of course I'm open to other feedback.
Motherboard selection
Is there a benefit from one model listed over the other? I'm leaning towards the X12STH due to the additional SATA connectors. In the setup above, I would be using 6 SATA connectors so that leaves 2 free for future expansion before I need an additinal card.
RAM Sizing
I need about 32GB of RAM for the VMs to run efficiently. Would the remaining 32GB be sufficient for TrueNAS or should I bite the bullet and go to 128GB right away?
PCIe slots configuration
I would like to keep the PCIe x16 slot available. I have a Nvidia GPU in my Intel NUC at the moment that I may want to move. On Frigate, I use the Coral EdgeTPU for AI video processing but I may still want a GPU for transcoding. I have QuickSync allocated to Plex so I assume I can't share it also with Frigate.
That leaves me with 1 x PCI-E 4.0 x4 (in x8 slot) and 1 PCI-E 3.0 x4 (in x8 slot). The network card is PCI-E 2.0 x8 and I also have a PERC H710 in IT mode in my Dell T7600 that is also PCI-E 2.0 x8. Any recommended slot assignment or I should look at replacing those 2? I won't need the HBA right away, I just want to future proof this solution since this is a fairly large investment.
Additional storage
Do I need additional drives for the VMs or can I install them on the above RAID-Z2 storage pool?
For starter, I'm trying to replace the following:
Dell Precision T7600, dual E5-2687W, 64 GB RAM, 14TB hard drive running ESXi (1 VM with a NFS share and a few other small test Linux VMs)
Intel NUC Exteme 12 running Proxmox VE (Plex and NZB downloader, Home Assistant, Frigate NAS)
QNAP TS-219P II
The T7600 used to be my main virtualisation machine. However, Plex transcoding was awful so I moved my Media Server to my NUC and then started playing with Home Assistant and Frigate.
I would like to decommission the T7600 to reduce my carbon footprint and rebuild everything on a single machine so that I can get back my NUC for other purposes. I would run TrueNAS Scale native and other VMs on it, hoping to passhtrough the iGPU to Plex and the Coral M.2 to Frigate.
- Motherboard: X12STH-F or X12STL-F ($357 USD)
- CPU: Intel Xeon E-2388G ($612 USD)
- Memory: 2 x 32GB ECC MEM-DR432MD-EU32 ($150 USD)
- Case: Fractal Design Node 804 ($125 USD)
- PSU: Vertex 850W GX Series 80+ Gold ($200 USD)
- Storage: 4x16TB WD RED Pro in RAIDZ2 --> ($900 USD)
- Boot Device: Kingston A400 120GB SSD SATA3 ($15 USD)
- Onboard M.2: Coral M.2 B+M EdgeTPU (repurposed from Intel NUC)
- Networking: Qlogic 57810S dual SFP+ (repurposed from T7600)
These are my questions right now and of course I'm open to other feedback.
Motherboard selection
Is there a benefit from one model listed over the other? I'm leaning towards the X12STH due to the additional SATA connectors. In the setup above, I would be using 6 SATA connectors so that leaves 2 free for future expansion before I need an additinal card.
RAM Sizing
I need about 32GB of RAM for the VMs to run efficiently. Would the remaining 32GB be sufficient for TrueNAS or should I bite the bullet and go to 128GB right away?
PCIe slots configuration
I would like to keep the PCIe x16 slot available. I have a Nvidia GPU in my Intel NUC at the moment that I may want to move. On Frigate, I use the Coral EdgeTPU for AI video processing but I may still want a GPU for transcoding. I have QuickSync allocated to Plex so I assume I can't share it also with Frigate.
That leaves me with 1 x PCI-E 4.0 x4 (in x8 slot) and 1 PCI-E 3.0 x4 (in x8 slot). The network card is PCI-E 2.0 x8 and I also have a PERC H710 in IT mode in my Dell T7600 that is also PCI-E 2.0 x8. Any recommended slot assignment or I should look at replacing those 2? I won't need the HBA right away, I just want to future proof this solution since this is a fairly large investment.
Additional storage
Do I need additional drives for the VMs or can I install them on the above RAID-Z2 storage pool?