NAS Build Recommendations

[Housewins]

Hi Everyone. Like many others inspired by LTT videos on NAS storage, I've finally decided to tackle my ever growing pile of external SSDs and set-up a home NAS. My thought process and decisions are outlined below.

 

Use Cases:

- Backup all data (documents, photos, videos, etc.)

- Learn and run Docker instances (Photoprism, Vaultwarden, NextCloud (maybe) and etc.)

- Run a Windows VM (if I wanted to run something CPU intensive)

- Use TrueNAS Scale as the OS. I'll start with a batch of 4 HDDs in a ZFS1, and then add more in the future.

- Run Plex.

- Potentially be able to have access to the NAS from outside the home network.

 

Buying Decisions:

- The PCPartPicker List is here: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kXvJGL

- Buying new components as deals came up - Looked into picking up used Xeon / server components but as this is the first time I'm building such a system I'd preferred to get new parts for peace of mind.

- Went with AMD as opposed to Intel - Having trouble finding a consumer Intel CPU / MOBO combo with ECC support (likely I'm overlooking or don't understand the spec sheets I'm reading ).

- Get ECC memory (vs. Non-ECC) - I researched on this and there's a lot of differing opinions but I erred on the side of caution and decided to go with ECC.

 

Next Steps / Requests:

- Critique any of the decisions I've made and provide recommendation(s) based on my use cases.

 

Thank you for your time and assistance!

[m9x3mos]

1 hour ago, Housewins said:

Hi Everyone. Like many others inspired by LTT videos on NAS storage, I've finally decided to tackle my ever growing pile of external SSDs and set-up a home NAS. My thought process and decisions are outlined below.

 

Use Cases:

- Backup all data (documents, photos, videos, etc.)

- Learn and run Docker instances (Photoprism, Vaultwarden, NextCloud (maybe) and etc.)

- Run a Windows VM (if I wanted to run something CPU intensive)

- Use TrueNAS Scale as the OS. I'll start with a batch of 4 HDDs in a ZFS1, and then add more in the future.

- Run Plex.

- Potentially be able to have access to the NAS from outside the home network.

 

Buying Decisions:

- The PCPartPicker List is here: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kXvJGL

- Buying new components as deals came up - Looked into picking up used Xeon / server components but as this is the first time I'm building such a system I'd preferred to get new parts for peace of mind.

- Went with AMD as opposed to Intel - Having trouble finding a consumer Intel CPU / MOBO combo with ECC support (likely I'm overlooking or don't understand the spec sheets I'm reading ).

- Get ECC memory (vs. Non-ECC) - I researched on this and there's a lot of differing opinions but I erred on the side of caution and decided to go with ECC.

 

Next Steps / Requests:

- Critique any of the decisions I've made and provide recommendation(s) based on my use cases.

 

Thank you for your time and assistance!

Overall that looks good to me. Can't really tell if that case can have fans over the hard drives or not. But that is one thing I like having to keep the drives cooler. I use a fractal design r5. The r6 and 7 both do that as well. 

I would get 4 of the same drive instead 2 if different ones. Just test them before using though, it will be fine. If you have mismatched drives with different cache levels or performance it might cause a small amount of performance degradation. 

[Housewins]

1 hour ago, m9x3mos said:

Overall that looks good to me. Can't really tell if that case can have fans over the hard drives or not. But that is one thing I like having to keep the drives cooler. I use a fractal design r5. The r6 and 7 both do that as well. 

I would get 4 of the same drive instead 2 if different ones. Just test them before using though, it will be fine. If you have mismatched drives with different cache levels or performance it might cause a small amount of performance degradation. 

Thank you for the response.

 

- I hadn't considered the fans being on top of the HDDs so I'll look into that. And I'll check out the Fractal cases - Main consideration was to have enough space of 6+ HDDs + some SSDs (futureproofing as I know I'll likely expand in the future).

- I wanted to get different brands to avoid getting a bad batch or something (I know its a non-existent chance of happening but still ). I'll just get the cheaper option available between the WD Red Pros & Seagate Ironwolf Pros.