Storage advice please: data/server/NAS?

alexkyriak · 18 Sep 2022 at 11:54

Thanks @Snapshot , I was thinking 8gb should be sufficient.

I have a motherboard on its way, with 4 sata ports onboard, and will put in a spare sata pcie I have which has ports on it also. If I don’t go for cache nvme I could go either ssd or nvme for the OS

Edit: Could I get one stick of ram instead of two? Presume no performance loss if I went one stick?

Snapshot · 19 Sep 2022 at 10:41

It depends on the OS and disk configuration. If I remember correctly the recommendation for RAIDZ1 (as an example) is 1GB per TB of storage.

You mobo will run with one stick of RAM but there will be a slight performance loss as two sticks are used in dual-channel mode.

alexkyriak · 19 Sep 2022 at 12:17

Thanks, guess I’ll go two sticks.

This is a decent resource I’ve been looking at: https://www.truenas.com/docs/core/gettingstarted/corehardwareguide/

Decent info here, if I’ve understood correctly for my 5 disk system, 8gb ‘home-use’ use case should be enough: ‘You should have at least 8 GB of RAM for basic TrueNAS operations with up to eight drives.’

alexkyriak · 21 Sep 2022 at 23:21

OK so kit all arrived. Jonsbo N1 chassis, i5-10600 10th gen Intel CPU, z590i Aorus Ultra ITX mobo, thermaltake 550w SFF PSU, 16gb 2400 DDR4 RAM (from 2x8gb sticks, I know, possibly overkill), 256gb nvme OS disk (hard to get smaller for almost the same dosh), 5x12tb IronWolf drives, and a wing and a prayer. Will assemble in the next week or so hopefully. No cache drive - apparently not needed for my use case. Aiming for a RAID6-a-like setup in True NAS.

Armageus · 22 Sep 2022 at 06:50

Please tell me it's going to run some virtual machines/dockers/other apps as well?

alexkyriak · 26 Sep 2022 at 22:19

Hi, have been wondering about VMs and a good use for them. Could you possibly help educate me a bit on this? Ie, good use cases, benefits for setting these up, etc. Am reading up on this prior to deciding on the setup to deploy, it's a big arena with a lot of information to understand and digest, and a bit daunting; any advice or pointers would be much appreciated. Cheers

alexkyriak · 18 Oct 2022 at 22:22

Ok the Jonsbo N1 and kit all built and installed. Lovely equipment actually, really enjoyed putting this all together, really clever design and nice and good feel and quality. Haven't run it yet, still considering best way to set it up, but thinking TrueNAS.

So not sure if this is the best place to ask this question, but: Plex or Jellyfin? What's the consensus amongst the OCUK Forumers? Cheers.

alexkyriak · 2 Nov 2022 at 21:46

Ok so quick sense check: is there any convincing reason to go RAID5 instead of RAID6? I was planning RAID6 due to the better recovery/redundancy potential, but see lots of builds and build videos happily using RAID5. This question is with a five disk setup in mind.

Armageus · 3 Nov 2022 at 11:15

alexkyriak said:
So not sure if this is the best place to ask this question, but: Plex or Jellyfin?

Neither

I use Emby (which is what Jellyfin was forked from)

alexkyriak said:
Ok so quick sense check: is there any convincing reason to go RAID5 instead of RAID6? I was planning RAID6 due to the better recovery/redundancy potential, but see lots of builds and build videos happily using RAID5. This question is with a five disk setup in mind.

The only valid reason for RAID5 is for storing media that you can afford to lose (i.e. you can re-rip it), and are space/budget constrained.

For anything else with 5 drive bays, RAID6 is the most logical option

alexkyriak · 5 Nov 2022 at 17:33

Armageus said:
Neither I use Emby (which is what Jellyfin was forked from)

The only valid reason for RAID5 is for storing media that you can afford to lose (i.e. you can re-rip it), and are space/budget constrained.

For anything else with 5 drive bays, RAID6 is the most logical option

Thanks mate, ok yes thought so, but just checking.

Emby! Gosh there are so many different platforms out there. Will just have to experiment with one or two of them and see if it's my cup of tea.

alexkyriak · 22 Jan 2023 at 22:41

So got around to installing truenas and plex. Now I am bewildered by all the options for ways to set it up. So I am searching for good tips to set up the media folders, which I think I will do a little more with than using the 'default' Movies and TV Shows recommendation. I think I need a few more Library types, however I think I will need to rely on Collections a lot, instead of lots of differentiation in the library folders.

One other slightly concerning thing I've only just read in relation to the hardware, is that for a single 4k transcode apparently an i7 cpu is the minimum? Hadn't read that before. I have an i5 10600, seems to transcode a 4k movie to an iphone perfectly in my testing.