WB3FFV
Dabbler
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2020
- Messages
- 27
I have been doing a lot of reading here while putting together a TrueNAS 12 server for use here in my home lab. That said, the more I read about the various devs like cache, log, metadata and dedup, the more unsure I become of the best layout.
First off the server is a Dell R720xd, with a pair of Xeon E5-2697v2 processors, along with 192G of ECC RAM installed, plus typical things like redundant power supplies, so the box is pretty much loaded up. It's the LFF chassis, so I have a dozen 3.5" (LFF) 7200 rpm 3TB SAS drives in the front, which I know isn't the largest storage going, but it's way more than I used to have on my Synology, and it should suit my needs. I also wanted to get my NAS on to the 10GE LAN, and I have done that with this new server, in fact I used both 10G ports in an LACP group for redundancy there as well to the network.
Here is where it gets confusing. I loaded the OS on to the Dell internal Dual-SD card module (I have two Kingston 32G high-endurance cards in a mirror), and then I setup all the drives in the front of the chassis as a large Raid-Z2 storage. Now this server has 2x of the 2.5" (SFF) SAS slots in the rear of the chassis, and I figured I should put them to use. So I took and loaded in two 200G SAS SSD's into the slots. Now the question is, what to do with the two SSD's?
My initial thought was, with 192G RAM, I probably have plenty of ARC, so take the two SSD's in a mirror and use them for SLOG. Looks almost like overkill for SLOG from my reading, but I am not sure. I also see that it can be L2ARC, but again with 192G of RAM, it doesn't seem like I should need additional caching. Finally I see that I can use them as a metadev (fusion?) filesystem, but as my main disk is Raid-Z2, it barks about wanting to use an SSD mirror for fusion, so I was afraid to force it.
So I set out with Google, and started reading, and I of course have found many articles, but the more I seem to read various threads, the more confused I end up becoming on how to best use the couple small SAS SSD's I have in the chassis. I don't want to start a holy war over anything, but I am all for some input on this configuration I have, and what might best take advantage of the hardware I have to use.
Just as an FYI, I have a couple jails running with stuff like Plex, Logitech Media Server, and I have been playing with NextCloud, though I really haven't done diddly with it, just learning what it's about. I also do SMB and NFS shares in general, and setup a small iSCSI drive to use with Adobe Lightroom on my workstation as it will not let you keep it's catalogues on a mapped drive, but it sees very light use.
On a side note, where is the best place to keep the system dataset, if it matters?
Regards...
First off the server is a Dell R720xd, with a pair of Xeon E5-2697v2 processors, along with 192G of ECC RAM installed, plus typical things like redundant power supplies, so the box is pretty much loaded up. It's the LFF chassis, so I have a dozen 3.5" (LFF) 7200 rpm 3TB SAS drives in the front, which I know isn't the largest storage going, but it's way more than I used to have on my Synology, and it should suit my needs. I also wanted to get my NAS on to the 10GE LAN, and I have done that with this new server, in fact I used both 10G ports in an LACP group for redundancy there as well to the network.
Here is where it gets confusing. I loaded the OS on to the Dell internal Dual-SD card module (I have two Kingston 32G high-endurance cards in a mirror), and then I setup all the drives in the front of the chassis as a large Raid-Z2 storage. Now this server has 2x of the 2.5" (SFF) SAS slots in the rear of the chassis, and I figured I should put them to use. So I took and loaded in two 200G SAS SSD's into the slots. Now the question is, what to do with the two SSD's?
My initial thought was, with 192G RAM, I probably have plenty of ARC, so take the two SSD's in a mirror and use them for SLOG. Looks almost like overkill for SLOG from my reading, but I am not sure. I also see that it can be L2ARC, but again with 192G of RAM, it doesn't seem like I should need additional caching. Finally I see that I can use them as a metadev (fusion?) filesystem, but as my main disk is Raid-Z2, it barks about wanting to use an SSD mirror for fusion, so I was afraid to force it.
So I set out with Google, and started reading, and I of course have found many articles, but the more I seem to read various threads, the more confused I end up becoming on how to best use the couple small SAS SSD's I have in the chassis. I don't want to start a holy war over anything, but I am all for some input on this configuration I have, and what might best take advantage of the hardware I have to use.
Just as an FYI, I have a couple jails running with stuff like Plex, Logitech Media Server, and I have been playing with NextCloud, though I really haven't done diddly with it, just learning what it's about. I also do SMB and NFS shares in general, and setup a small iSCSI drive to use with Adobe Lightroom on my workstation as it will not let you keep it's catalogues on a mapped drive, but it sees very light use.
On a side note, where is the best place to keep the system dataset, if it matters?
Regards...