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How Should I Setup My DIY NAS?

So I am building a NAS from scratch. I wanted it to be a little bit beefy in regards to processing power so that I can have it support multiple different services. Of those I plan to run Plex, TrueNas, a Steam Cache, and NextCloud. I may have some other things I would like to have running on it as well down the road, but I haven't found those yet - so ideally I would like to keep my options open.

With that said, how do you think I should go about running all of these things on one machine, allowing TrueNas to be in full control of the storage? I have heard of Proxmox being a great tool to virtualize servers, but I don't know how that would work with TrueNas since I'm not sure how the passthrough of drives would work in that scenario. I also know that TrueNas has direct support for both NextCloud and Plex within itself, which is great; but I don't think I can run a steam cache natively within TrueNas.

 

Then again, I think TrueNas jails could be a solution here. Would it be possible to have TrueNas be the core of the server and use jails to run all of the services I like?

 

Just looking for opinions on what the best way to go about this would be. I think I have a basic understanding of how I should proceed, but if you have any tips or suggestions to help me on my way I am all ears!

 

"Although there's a problem on the horizon; there's no horizon." - K-2SO

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HOw about unraid, it does all of these is a nice web ui.

 

But proxmox is great for running vms.

 

Im not a fan of truenas vms, but give it a shot if you want.

 

What drives and hardware are you using?

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17 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

So I am building a NAS from scratch. I wanted it to be a little bit beefy in regards to processing power so that I can have it support multiple different services. Of those I plan to run Plex, TrueNas, a Steam Cache, and NextCloud. I may have some other things I would like to have running on it as well down the road, but I haven't found those yet - so ideally I would like to keep my options open.

With that said, how do you think I should go about running all of these things on one machine, allowing TrueNas to be in full control of the storage? I have heard of Proxmox being a great tool to virtualize servers, but I don't know how that would work with TrueNas since I'm not sure how the passthrough of drives would work in that scenario. I also know that TrueNas has direct support for both NextCloud and Plex within itself, which is great; but I don't think I can run a steam cache natively within TrueNas.

 

Then again, I think TrueNas jails could be a solution here. Would it be possible to have TrueNas be the core of the server and use jails to run all of the services I like?

 

Just looking for opinions on what the best way to go about this would be. I think I have a basic understanding of how I should proceed, but if you have any tips or suggestions to help me on my way I am all ears!

 

I would run things virtual and run all your applications like plex and whatever else in Ubuntu VM's next to truenas (not in jails, jails mostly suck). 

 

You will need an HBA (host bus adapter) to pass through to the trueNAS VM, and the harddrives plug into that.

 

You don't need much power for all of this, if you look in my sig, I run my homelab off an i3. That is ~50TB of FreeNAS (truenas) storage in RAID Z2, multiple ubuntu VM's for plex and stuff like that, some home automation, docker containers for pihole and stuff, and a Windows 1- LTSC VM, and the i3 has no issues. A decent quad core Ryzen would be a great option here.

 

Basically, you have some research and learning to do, and at some point you will feel comfortable pulling the trigger on hardware. Then you will have a lot more learning to do as running a homelab is an exercise in patience and continual learning 🙂

Rig: i7 13700k - - Asus Z790-P Wifi - - RTX 4080 - - 4x16GB 6000MHz - - Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe Boot + Main Programs - - Assorted SATA SSD's for Photo Work - - Corsair RM850x - - Sound BlasterX EA-5 - - Corsair XC8 JTC Edition - - Corsair GPU Full Cover GPU Block - - XT45 X-Flow 420 + UT60 280 rads - - EK XRES RGB PWM - - Fractal Define S2 - - Acer Predator X34 -- Logitech G502 - - Logitech G710+ - - Logitech Z5500 - - LTT Deskpad

 

Headphones/amp/dac: Schiit Lyr 3 - - Fostex TR-X00 - - Sennheiser HD 6xx

 

Homelab/ Media Server: Proxmox VE host - - 512 NVMe Samsung 980 RAID Z1 for VM's/Proxmox boot - - Xeon e5 2660 V4- - Supermicro X10SRF-i - - 128 GB ECC 2133 - - 10x4 TB WD Red RAID Z2 - - Corsair 750D - - Corsair RM650i - - Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA - - Intel RES2SC240 SAS Expander - - TreuNAS + many other VM’s

 

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3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

HOw about unraid, it does all of these is a nice web ui.

Unraid is also a good option as it supports VM's decently well natively I believe, and its much easier expandable then freenas and ZFS.

Rig: i7 13700k - - Asus Z790-P Wifi - - RTX 4080 - - 4x16GB 6000MHz - - Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe Boot + Main Programs - - Assorted SATA SSD's for Photo Work - - Corsair RM850x - - Sound BlasterX EA-5 - - Corsair XC8 JTC Edition - - Corsair GPU Full Cover GPU Block - - XT45 X-Flow 420 + UT60 280 rads - - EK XRES RGB PWM - - Fractal Define S2 - - Acer Predator X34 -- Logitech G502 - - Logitech G710+ - - Logitech Z5500 - - LTT Deskpad

 

Headphones/amp/dac: Schiit Lyr 3 - - Fostex TR-X00 - - Sennheiser HD 6xx

 

Homelab/ Media Server: Proxmox VE host - - 512 NVMe Samsung 980 RAID Z1 for VM's/Proxmox boot - - Xeon e5 2660 V4- - Supermicro X10SRF-i - - 128 GB ECC 2133 - - 10x4 TB WD Red RAID Z2 - - Corsair 750D - - Corsair RM650i - - Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA - - Intel RES2SC240 SAS Expander - - TreuNAS + many other VM’s

 

iPhone 14 Pro - 2018 MacBook Air

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7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

HOw about unraid, it does all of these is a nice web ui.

 

But proxmox is great for running vms.

 

Im not a fan of truenas vms, but give it a shot if you want.

 

What drives and hardware are you using?

6 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Unraid is also a good option as it supports VM's decently well natively I believe, and its much easier expandable then freenas and ZFS.

Hmm... I'll be honest I didn't look into unRAID until just now. I had heard of it plenty from LTT of course, but was turned off from it since It was paid software. I guess I assumed it was subscription based, not a one-time fee like they state on the site. And it also looks like it will do everything I am trying to achieve too!\

 

As for hardware, I don't have drives chosen yet since I plan to just use what I have available until prices come back down. But since I won't be doing much deleting of my files I will likely buy external disks and shuck them since they are usually cheaper and SMR. It will be running an old Ryzen 7 1700x since that can just barely squeeze out a 4K transcode. I already have an HBA and a 10G nic to pop in as well. Ultimately I would like my desktop and my roomate's desktop to be connected via 10G so we can have lightning fast connections to the server.

 

I will definitely be looking into Unraid. Probably will load the trial version on first so I can test it out and see if all my services will run on it.

 

 

"Although there's a problem on the horizon; there's no horizon." - K-2SO

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Just now, dj_ripcord said:

Hmm... I'll be honest I didn't look into unRAID until just now. I had heard of it plenty from LTT of course, but was turned off from it since It was paid software. I guess I assumed it was subscription based, not a one-time fee like they state on the site. And it also looks like it will do everything I am trying to achieve too!\

 

As for hardware, I don't have drives chosen yet since I plan to just use what I have available until prices come back down. But since I won't be doing much deleting of my files I will likely buy external disks and shuck them since they are usually cheaper and SMR. It will be running an old Ryzen 7 1700x since that can just barely squeeze out a 4K transcode. I already have an HBA and a 10G nic to pop in as well. Ultimately I would like my desktop and my roomate's desktop to be connected via 10G so we can have lightning fast connections to the server.

 

I will definitely be looking into Unraid. Probably will load the trial version on first so I can test it out and see if all my services will run on it.

 

 

Yea unraid should work fine. 

 

The 1700x should do 4k, but depends on the codecs, but Id really try not to transcode 4k if you don't have to.

 

The only thing is unraid isn't that fast, don't expect speeds faster than a single hdd for reads, and slower for writes without a write cache.

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Just now, dj_ripcord said:

Hmm... I'll be honest I didn't look into unRAID until just now. I had heard of it plenty from LTT of course, but was turned off from it since It was paid software. I guess I assumed it was subscription based, not a one-time fee like they state on the site. And it also looks like it will do everything I am trying to achieve too!\

UnRaid is(was) my first venture into NAS. It's amazing. Yes it paid, but it's well worth the price IMHO.

It's also somewhat simple to add a new drive. 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Add_One_or_More_New_Data_Drives

I'm not actually trying to be as grumpy as it seems.

I will find your mentions of Ikea or Gnome and I will /s post. 

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1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea unraid should work fine. 

 

The 1700x should do 4k, but depends on the codecs, but Id really try not to transcode 4k if you don't have to.

 

The only thing is unraid isn't that fast, don't expect speeds faster than a single hdd for reads, and slower for writes without a write cache.

Well that's another thing. I have a 1Tb NVME I intend to use for caching.

"Although there's a problem on the horizon; there's no horizon." - K-2SO

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2 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

Hmm... I'll be honest I didn't look into unRAID until just now. I had heard of it plenty from LTT of course, but was turned off from it since It was paid software. I guess I assumed it was subscription based, not a one-time fee like they state on the site. And it also looks like it will do everything I am trying to achieve too!\

 

As for hardware, I don't have drives chosen yet since I plan to just use what I have available until prices come back down. But since I won't be doing much deleting of my files I will likely buy external disks and shuck them since they are usually cheaper and SMR. It will be running an old Ryzen 7 1700x since that can just barely squeeze out a 4K transcode. I already have an HBA and a 10G nic to pop in as well. Ultimately I would like my desktop and my roomate's desktop to be connected via 10G so we can have lightning fast connections to the server.

 

I will definitely be looking into Unraid. Probably will load the trial version on first so I can test it out and see if all my services will run on it.

 

 

Unraid will let you actually add storage in this way, ZFS will not.... Unraid definitely sounds like the option for you.

 

Also, the first 3 rules of RAID is RAID is not a backup, and the first 3 rules of transcoding 4k is don't transcode 4k, keep a 1080 or 720p copy as well as a 4k copy. Just things to remember 😉

Rig: i7 13700k - - Asus Z790-P Wifi - - RTX 4080 - - 4x16GB 6000MHz - - Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe Boot + Main Programs - - Assorted SATA SSD's for Photo Work - - Corsair RM850x - - Sound BlasterX EA-5 - - Corsair XC8 JTC Edition - - Corsair GPU Full Cover GPU Block - - XT45 X-Flow 420 + UT60 280 rads - - EK XRES RGB PWM - - Fractal Define S2 - - Acer Predator X34 -- Logitech G502 - - Logitech G710+ - - Logitech Z5500 - - LTT Deskpad

 

Headphones/amp/dac: Schiit Lyr 3 - - Fostex TR-X00 - - Sennheiser HD 6xx

 

Homelab/ Media Server: Proxmox VE host - - 512 NVMe Samsung 980 RAID Z1 for VM's/Proxmox boot - - Xeon e5 2660 V4- - Supermicro X10SRF-i - - 128 GB ECC 2133 - - 10x4 TB WD Red RAID Z2 - - Corsair 750D - - Corsair RM650i - - Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA - - Intel RES2SC240 SAS Expander - - TreuNAS + many other VM’s

 

iPhone 14 Pro - 2018 MacBook Air

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1 hour ago, dj_ripcord said:

Hmm... I'll be honest I didn't look into unRAID until just now. I had heard of it plenty from LTT of course, but was turned off from it since It was paid software. I guess I assumed it was subscription based, not a one-time fee like they state on the site. And it also looks like it will do everything I am trying to achieve too!\

I'm pleased with UnRAID and have two licenses.  Sure it costs money but I'll pay money for good software.  UnRAID is also very very well documented with an active forum full of threads discussing issues and solutions.  I def prefer to use software with a lot of people and a community full of users who have either already answered your question by answering someone else or will answer it if you ask it.

 

I have it a bunch of Dockers running even, Plex, SickRage, Meduse, CouchPotato, SABZNBD, Transmission, a CSGO server. Resiolio Sync, SyncThing and even a Quake 3 Arena server

Desktop: Ryzen 9 3950X, Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus, 64GB DDR4, MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio, Creative Sound Blaster AE-7

Gaming PC #2: Ryzen 7 5800X3D, Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus, 32GB DDR4, Gigabyte Windforce GTX 1080

Gaming PC #3: Intel i7 4790, Asus B85M-G, 16B DDR3, XFX Radeon R9 390X 8GB

WFH PC: Intel i7 4790, Asus B85M-F, 16GB DDR3, Gigabyte Radeon RX 6400 4GB

UnRAID #1: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Asus TUF Gaming B450M-Plus, 64GB DDR4, Radeon HD 5450

UnRAID #2: Intel E5-2603v2, Asus P9X79 LE, 24GB DDR3, Radeon HD 5450

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If you're happy to use Command Line, i'll point out you can run ZFS in UnRAID, and theres a great tutorial for setting it up with ZFS snapshots / shadowcopy

 

Also they just added multiple cache pool support in 6.9, and  I believe native ZFS support is in the pipeline for UnRaid 7.0 from pre-release discussions during 6.9.

 

Currently the only caveat using the ZFS plugin/compiling, is obviously you cant see the arrays in the UnRAID GUI, and you need to sacrafic 1 storage device to UnRAID for it to initialize (it needs at least 1 disk in the unraid array).

 

My UnRAID during 6.7 was using my 2 NVMe drives in a mirrored ZFS raid for my AppData, VM Storage, etc...I only just migrated it over to its own mirrored unraid pool since 6.9 brought in multiple cache pools. 

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On 6/1/2021 at 11:31 PM, Jarsky said:

If you're happy to use Command Line, i'll point out you can run ZFS in UnRAID, and theres a great tutorial for setting it up with ZFS snapshots / shadowcopy

 

Also they just added multiple cache pool support in 6.9, and  I believe native ZFS support is in the pipeline for UnRaid 7.0 from pre-release discussions during 6.9.

 

Currently the only caveat using the ZFS plugin/compiling, is obviously you cant see the arrays in the UnRAID GUI, and you need to sacrafic 1 storage device to UnRAID for it to initialize (it needs at least 1 disk in the unraid array).

 

My UnRAID during 6.7 was using my 2 NVMe drives in a mirrored ZFS raid for my AppData, VM Storage, etc...I only just migrated it over to its own mirrored unraid pool since 6.9 brought in multiple cache pools. 

I dabble in linux so yes I am comfortable using command line tools. But if you don't mind elaborating, what would the benefits be to using ZFS under UnRaid instead of just using Unraid's built-in array tools?

"Although there's a problem on the horizon; there's no horizon." - K-2SO

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On 6/1/2021 at 9:53 PM, CerealExperimentsLain said:

I'm pleased with UnRAID and have two licenses.  Sure it costs money but I'll pay money for good software.  UnRAID is also very very well documented with an active forum full of threads discussing issues and solutions.  I def prefer to use software with a lot of people and a community full of users who have either already answered your question by answering someone else or will answer it if you ask it.

 

I have it a bunch of Dockers running even, Plex, SickRage, Meduse, CouchPotato, SABZNBD, Transmission, a CSGO server. Resiolio Sync, SyncThing and even a Quake 3 Arena server

Very nice!

So since you say you're using docker to run those services in containers, I imagine you were able to expose your pools to those containers so they have access to your array in some form? All I care about is having something manage my array, if I can run docker containers for all my services that have home directories inside the storage pools I create, I'll be peachy!

"Although there's a problem on the horizon; there's no horizon." - K-2SO

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42 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

Very nice!

So since you say you're using docker to run those services in containers, I imagine you were able to expose your pools to those containers so they have access to your array in some form? All I care about is having something manage my array, if I can run docker containers for all my services that have home directories inside the storage pools I create, I'll be peachy!

Yes, dockers in UnRAID can access the storage pool or any other storage if you map them to allow it.  Here's how SickChill is mapping to my main pool in it's configuration:

 

unraiddocker.png.7d55a6db1480b198e1f1190a892cf29b.png

 

So the mount for the pool, /mnt/user0/media/ is mapped to /tv/ inside the docker.  I can add these as much as I want and also map non-pool drives.  None of my docker APPLICATIONS are running off the pool, I use a separate 256GB SSD just to hold the dockers themselves and sometimes their data, that's where the entire Q3A server runs off, it never touches the main pool.

 

Also,here's a fun tip, there's two pool mounts, one with your cache (if you have one) and one without it.  /mnt/user/[Pool Name]/ takes you to the pool with the cache drive but /mnt/user0/[Pool Name]/, note that zero, takes you to the pool without the cache.  I use another 2TB SSD for all the downloads and unpacking for SIckChill, SABNZBD and such seperate from anything else, which are then post processed from there by SickChill into the pool.  Why would I want them to be copied from a 2TB SSD to the 512GB cache SSD in the system just to be moved to mechanical storage later at 3am?  It's already on an SSD, I just want it on the mechanical drives directly, so using the user0 mount it ensures SickChill writes directly to the mechanical drives.  I really only use the cache drive for writes over SMB shares from other computers.  But that's my needs, just a handy thing I fuond Googling.  And that's the great thing about UnRAID, it's forums have so many answers like things like that.

 

And dockers don't need to have exclusive access to drives.  My Transmission docker also uses the same 2TB SSD for it's destination for torrents.  If you had a specific need you could add a specialized NVME drive and use it exclusively for that docker if you wanted, all in how you map things.  Dockers also can't access storage they don't have mapped, it doesn't exist to them, only what's mapped is accessible.

 

 

Desktop: Ryzen 9 3950X, Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus, 64GB DDR4, MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio, Creative Sound Blaster AE-7

Gaming PC #2: Ryzen 7 5800X3D, Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus, 32GB DDR4, Gigabyte Windforce GTX 1080

Gaming PC #3: Intel i7 4790, Asus B85M-G, 16B DDR3, XFX Radeon R9 390X 8GB

WFH PC: Intel i7 4790, Asus B85M-F, 16GB DDR3, Gigabyte Radeon RX 6400 4GB

UnRAID #1: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Asus TUF Gaming B450M-Plus, 64GB DDR4, Radeon HD 5450

UnRAID #2: Intel E5-2603v2, Asus P9X79 LE, 24GB DDR3, Radeon HD 5450

MiniPC: BeeLink SER6 6600H w/ Ryzen 5 6600H, 16GB DDR5 
Windows XP Retro PC: Intel i3 3250, Asus P8B75-M LX, 8GB DDR3, Sapphire Radeon HD 6850, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy

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