Creating my first NAS + Plex + Homelab

[Hammoud.MA]

I am planning on building a home server that will be used to backup photos and videos, a media server for movies/series, and host apps (I like to make small apps/websites, so it would be cool if I could deploy them on my server)

I am struggling with a lot of the decisions I need to make.

1. Unraid or TrueNas, I care about flexibility when adding drives. I am starting with the minimal drives I need and will add more later.
    

2. Which RAID setup: I have photos, videos, and documents that I cannot lose, but also will be using the server as a media server/ application server. Based on what I read, I am leaning towards RAID6 since I can lose 2 drives and still recover. But maybe for my use case there is something better?
    

3. I have a prebuilt gaming PC that has a mobo that supports ECC, CPU: Ryzen 5800 (OEM), and 16 GB non-ECC RAM. I can either use these parts for the server, and upgrade my gaming setup, or if this is an overkill, I would appreciate a suggestion for MOBO/CPU combo. If it is not an overkill, do I need ECC memory? 
    

4. With that CPU, do I need a GPU to transcode media?
   
    

I live in the EU. I have a 1gig fiber connection.

Thanks in advance 

[Electronics Wizardy]

How much storage do you want?

 

If you want ease of expansion, unraid is much better.

 

unraid forces you to use their parity system, and you can do single/dual parity. Really depends on the number of drives. I'd do single parity if less than about 5 data drives .

 

non-ecc i'd say is fine for home server use.

 

Does that 5800 have a video out? I'd get a video card for setup and troubleshooting. Otherwise a 5800 will be fine.

 

You can probably do all the transcoding you need on the CPU.

[Hammoud.MA]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much storage do you want?

 

If you want ease of expansion, unraid is much better.

 

unraid forces you to use their parity system, and you can do single/dual parity. Really depends on the number of drives. I'd do single parity if less than about 5 data drives .

 

non-ecc i'd say is fine for home server use.

 

Does that 5800 have a video out? I'd get a video card for setup and troubleshooting. Otherwise a 5800 will be fine.

 

You can probably do all the transcoding you need on the CPU.

I am planning on starting with 3 Ironwolf pros 8tbs. Add more when needed.

I am a bit confused on the unraid parity system. Does that mean I don't get to choose what raid I want to use? My only concern is losing my data (maybe a bit too paranoid also) because of a harddrive failure 

The 5800 doesn't have iGPU, so will get like a p600 or something for cheap. 





 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Hammoud.MA said:

I am planning on starting with 3 Ironwolf pros 8tbs. Add more when needed.

I am a bit confused on the unraid parity system. Does that mean I don't get to choose what raid I want to use? My only concern is losing my data (maybe a bit too paranoid also) because of a harddrive failure 

The 5800 doesn't have iGPU, so will get like a p600 or something for cheap. 





 

I'd probably get fewer bigger drives, like start with 2x 20TB drives.

 

unraid parity is kinda like raid 5/6. I'd do a single parity or raid 5 eqv with 3 drives here.

 

 

[Bersella AI]

1. Currently, Unraid has more flexibility in disk arrays, while TrueNAS will be benefited from recent ZFS patches that allows appending new drives to an existing array.
2. RAID does not guarantee data integrity, but service availability, and is thus not necessarily required in regards of data protections. Only more copies make sense here. My TrueNAS server, for example, has been configured to back up documents & photos from the Main Storage (single 16TB drive) to the Hot Backup pool (single 4TB drive) and cloud, periodically.
3. The Ryzen 5800 seems to be pretty decent for a server. TrueNAS does not require ECC, but recommends having it.
4. This processor would make soft transcoding without much hassle, although more power would be consumed. If electricity bills matter to you, consider an additional GPU to handle videos.

[Hammoud.MA]

5 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

1. Currently, Unraid has more flexibility in disk arrays, while TrueNAS will be benefited from recent ZFS patches that allows appending new drives to an existing array.
2. RAID does not guarantee data integrity, but service availability, and is thus not necessarily required in regards of data protections. Only more copies make sense here. My TrueNAS server, for example, has been configured to back up documents & photos from the Main Storage (single 16TB drive) to the Hot Backup pool (single 4TB drive) and cloud, periodically.

1. So if TrueNAS supports appending new drives, is unraid still the best for my use case? I am also going to be running the media server, and some (if any) vms for apps. 
2. Thats very cool, do you have any post or thread to explain how u set that up? 

[Bersella AI]

18 hours ago, Hammoud.MA said:

1. So if TrueNAS supports appending new drives, is unraid still the best for my use case? I am also going to be running the media server, and some (if any) vms for apps. 
2. Thats very cool, do you have any post or thread to explain how u set that up? 

1. Yes, Unraid would still be preferred for your use case, as a RAID Z setup in TrueNAS requires drives with the exact same capacity, while Unraid does not require it -- just make sure the parity drive is the largest among all of them, per Unraid's official manual.
   Also, both TrueNAS (Core or Scale, with the latter recommended) and Unraid support virtualization & apps, although configurations are easier to make in Unraid.
2. It's my pleasure. My blog has this covered, but unfortunately, it was written in Chinese and requires translations. However, I can help understanding it in the follows.

--------

3.5 Settings for Hot Backup and Disaster Recovery

 

In the regard of data protection, TrueNAS has various solutions including: Scrubbing, Cloud Sync, Periodic Snapshot, Rsync, Replication and SMART Tests. For Cloud Sync, only popular cloud services outside of China, as well as a few common protocols like WebDAV & (S)FTP, are supported. I have a Private Cloud subscription from Lenovo, which supports WebDAV connections. Described in follows are my plans:

• Scrubbing: Once monthly for all pools (with the exception of boot-pool, which was configured to scrub once weekly in System Settings: Boot).
• Cloud Sync: Once daily, syncing only documents & photos, to the Lenovo Private Cloud service via WebDAV.
• Snapshots: Once daily, only for Docker containers & critical data; with the former kept for 2 days, the latter for 2 weeks.
• Rsync: No plans.
• Replication: Once daily, copying Docker containers & critical data from the Main Storage pool (single 16TB drive) to the Hot Backup pool (single 4TB drive).
• SMART Tests: Once biweekly for short tests, and once per 4 months for long tests.

[LIGISTX]

On 1/28/2024 at 4:05 AM, Hammoud.MA said:

1. So if TrueNAS supports appending new drives, is unraid still the best for my use case? I am also going to be running the media server, and some (if any) vms for apps. 

This isn’t actually available yet, so don’t pick a NAS based on future software.

 

8 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

Snapshots: Once daily, only for Docker containers & critical data; with the former kept for 2 days, the latter for 2 weeks.

I’d snapshot more often, they are free after all… I snapshot ever 10 minutes on my important data, and data that rarely changes I hold snapshots for 6 months. ZFS snapshotting is phenomenal.  

[Hammoud.MA]

15 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

1. Yes, Unraid would still be preferred for your use case, as a RAID Z setup in TrueNAS requires drives with the exact same capacity, while Unraid does not require it -- just make sure the parity drive is the largest among all of them, per Unraid's official manual.
   Also, both TrueNAS (Core or Scale, with the latter recommended) and Unraid support virtualization & apps, although configurations are easier to make in Unraid.
2. It's my pleasure. My blog has this covered, but unfortunately, it was written in Chinese and requires translations. However, I can help understanding it in the follows.

--------

3.5 Settings for Hot Backup and Disaster Recovery

 

In the regard of data protection, TrueNAS has various solutions including: Scrubbing, Cloud Sync, Periodic Snapshot, Rsync, Replication and SMART Tests. For Cloud Sync, only popular cloud services outside of China, as well as a few common protocols like WebDAV & (S)FTP, are supported. I have a Private Cloud subscription from Lenovo, which supports WebDAV connections. Described in follows are my plans:

• Scrubbing: Once monthly for all pools (with the exception of boot-pool, which was configured to scrub once weekly in System Settings: Boot).
• Cloud Sync: Once daily, syncing only documents & photos, to the Lenovo Private Cloud service via WebDAV.
• Snapshots: Once daily, only for Docker containers & critical data; with the former kept for 2 days, the latter for 2 weeks.
• Rsync: No plans.
• Replication: Once daily, copying Docker containers & critical data from the Main Storage pool (single 16TB drive) to the Hot Backup pool (single 4TB drive).
• SMART Tests: Once biweekly for short tests, and once per 4 months for long tests.

That is awesome thank you. I ordered the parts I was missing, I will get to assemble it this weekend. Hopefully it goes well

[Hammoud.MA]

6 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

This isn’t actually available yet, so don’t pick a NAS based on future software.

 

I’d snapshot more often, they are free after all… I snapshot ever 10 minutes on my important data, and data that rarely changes I hold snapshots for 6 months. ZFS snapshotting is phenomenal.  

Thats a good point. Unraid FTW

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, Hammoud.MA said:

Thats a good point. Unraid FTW

Being able to add drives to a raid z vdev will be huge… but until it’s actually in truenas, it’s vaporeware as far as truenas users are concerned. It 100% will be on soon™, but how long soon™ actually is is the issue.  

[Bersella AI]

14 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I’d snapshot more often, they are free after all… I snapshot ever 10 minutes on my important data, and data that rarely changes I hold snapshots for 6 months. ZFS snapshotting is phenomenal.  

Since files on my server barely get changed over 24 hours, this frequency would be sufficient for me. Also, 2 weeks would be adequate enough before making decisions to roll back. It is worth considering, though, to make snapshots on all datasets and/or keep older snapshots.

[LIGISTX]

27 minutes ago, Bersella AI said:

Since files on my server barely get changed over 24 hours, this frequency would be sufficient for me. Also, 2 weeks would be adequate enough before making decisions to roll back. It is worth considering, though, to make snapshots on all datasets and/or keep older snapshots.

I’d at least keep the snapshots longer. They don’t take any space so it’s worth keeping them for a long time. 

[LIGISTX]

They don’t take any space assuming no content changes. But only the first snapshot of the content change will incur a storage cost @Bersella AI