Building my first NAS

[bigbosss]

So I am planning to build my first NAS for my parents back home and was planning on having a setup like this hopefully 

    1.    Network Setup:
    •    DECO Mesh System
    2.    Remote Access:
    •    Tailscale
    3.    NAS Setup:
    •    ProxMox
    •    25GB partition for logs
    4.    Plex:
    •    Plex Media Server
    5.    System Monitoring:
    •    NetData
    •    Cockpit
    •    Watchtower
    6.    Data Management:
    •    ZFS (Snapshots, Data Integrity, Compression)
    7.    Alerts:
    •    NetData Alerts
    8.    Data Usage Management:
    •    Local traffic on LAN
    •    Tailscale for remote access

 

and I am not sure if I should be using 8 drives in raid z2 array or have less drives with a raid 1/ zfs mirror 

any thoughts would be greatly appreciated 

[Bersella AI]

Virtualization does not seem to be needed, as all of these services may be hosted by bare-metal TrueNAS CE (formally Scale) with various containers. Demands on performance are also pretty light that even dual-core processors would suffice. I have my TrueNAS server with Pentium G4600 running for 3 years which hosts:

• Tailscale -- Enable remote access.
• Telegraf + InfluxDB + Grafana -- Monitor the host system & record telemetry data.
• Plex or Jellyfin -- Manage media.
• TrueNAS itself has NetData built in (abandoned due to performance issues), as well as native ZFS support & alerting functionalities.

I don't know why logs are significant to retain here. If it refers to telemetry, set up a maximum period for retention (like 90 days) and it would not consume more than a few gigabytes.

[bigbosss]

On 4/12/2025 at 6:23 AM, Bersella AI said:

Virtualization does not seem to be needed, as all of these services may be hosted by bare-metal TrueNAS CE (formally Scale) with various containers. Demands on performance are also pretty light that even dual-core processors would suffice. I have my TrueNAS server with Pentium G4600 running for 3 years which hosts:

• Tailscale -- Enable remote access.
• Telegraf + InfluxDB + Grafana -- Monitor the host system & record telemetry data.
• Plex or Jellyfin -- Manage media.
• TrueNAS itself has NetData built in (abandoned due to performance issues), as well as native ZFS support & alerting functionalities.

I don't know why logs are significant to retain here. If it refers to telemetry, set up a maximum period for retention (like 90 days) and it would not consume more than a few gigabytes.

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I appreciate your suggestion to use TrueNAS CE (Scale) as a bare-metal solution. My initial plan was actually to use TrueNAS Scale, but some people recommended ProxMox for better flexibility in managing containers and future expansion. That said, your experience with TrueNAS handling Tailscale, ZFS, and built-in NetData aligns well with my goals, so I’ll definitely revisit TrueNAS to see if it simplifies the setup without sacrificing functionality.

Your point about a lightweight Pentium G4600 managing similar services is reassuring, as I was concerned about performance demands. On logs, I’m planning to allocate 25 GB to store a year’s worth of logs since I’ll be away from the NAS location for that period. I won’t be able to perform permanent hardware fixes during that time, but my dad’s business has a network administrator who can handle temporary hardware fixes as needed, and I can address software issues remotely. A year’s retention should cover troubleshooting needs without excessive storage.

On the RAID question, any thoughts on RAID Z2 with 8 drives vs. a ZFS mirror with fewer drives for this use case? Thanks again for the insights!

[dogwitch]

3 hours ago, bigbosss said:

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I appreciate your suggestion to use TrueNAS CE (Scale) as a bare-metal solution. My initial plan was actually to use TrueNAS Scale, but some people recommended ProxMox for better flexibility in managing containers and future expansion. That said, your experience with TrueNAS handling Tailscale, ZFS, and built-in NetData aligns well with my goals, so I’ll definitely revisit TrueNAS to see if it simplifies the setup without sacrificing functionality.

Your point about a lightweight Pentium G4600 managing similar services is reassuring, as I was concerned about performance demands. On logs, I’m planning to allocate 25 GB to store a year’s worth of logs since I’ll be away from the NAS location for that period. I won’t be able to perform permanent hardware fixes during that time, but my dad’s business has a network administrator who can handle temporary hardware fixes as needed, and I can address software issues remotely. A year’s retention should cover troubleshooting needs without excessive storage.

On the RAID question, any thoughts on RAID Z2 with 8 drives vs. a ZFS mirror with fewer drives for this use case? Thanks again for the insights!

just double check amount of pci lanes for future upgrades.

[bigbosss]

2 hours ago, dogwitch said:

just double check amount of pci lanes for future upgrades.

I plan to use an intel i5 6th gen processor 

[dogwitch]

24 minutes ago, bigbosss said:

I plan to use an intel i5 6th gen processor 

max total lanes 16.

[bigbosss]

11 hours ago, dogwitch said:

max total lanes 16.

So would you recommend I go with 4 1tb drives in raid z mirror on 8 drives in raid z2

[dogwitch]

18 minutes ago, bigbosss said:

So would you recommend I go with 4 1tb drives in raid z mirror on 8 drives in raid z2

up tp you.

if your not going to use a gpu .

that support  for the x16 slot.

the chipset share the usb and in built sata ports for a few pci past that. 3 or 4 lanes

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 hours ago, bigbosss said:

So would you recommend I go with 4 1tb drives in raid z mirror on 8 drives in raid z2

How much usable space do you need? 

 

What do you mean by raidz mirror? Its a either use raidz with parity or use mirrors, you can't use both.

 

With 1TB drives, I'd rather get 4TB drives or larger and use a mirror. No reason I see to use 4 or 8 drives at first glance here.

 

 

[Bersella AI]

On 4/20/2025 at 8:54 AM, bigbosss said:

On the RAID question, any thoughts on RAID Z2 with 8 drives vs. a ZFS mirror with fewer drives for this use case?

It depends on actual circumstances and significance of data. Be aware that RAID is not a backup, but more copies are.

 

RAID Z2 with more hard drives:

• Pros: Guaranteed uptime, more storage available.
• Cons: Noisy, more power-hungry, hence less preferable in home use.

 

RAID Z1/Z2 with SSDs:

• Pros: Absolutely quiet, power-saving & responsive
• Cons: Higher costs, may require more PCIe lanes or slots with NVMe variants. On a 6th gen Core i5 processor, this requires PCIe bifurcation (which may not be supported by the platform) or an M.2 RAID controller card (increasing costs significantly), as there does not appear to have adequate slots for NVMe SSDs. You may also wish to have faster Ethernet connections to utilize this better, hence adding further costs.

 

Mirror with 2 drives:

• Pros: Guaranteed uptime, fairly quiet and saves some power.
• Cons: At least a half of storage needs to be parity.

 

However, I took Plan D involving two single-drive pools, periodic replication and cloud backup, which has:

• Pros: Quiet, low power demands (~20W in idle), maxes out available storage for favorite movies/anime, involves actual copies rather than parity for data integrity (hence complies the 3-2-1 principle).
• Cons: Only selected dataset would be backed up (e.g. excluding movies/anime); cannot guarantee uptime.