Need a little guidance for starting my first Home Server?
Need a little guidance for starting my first Home Server?
Hi there stranger . I want to build myself a Homer Server and would require some help, sorry if it is a long post, but I included everything I thought could be needed below. Information: Budget (including currency): around 2.200€ (2.270 USD) Aim: It should be as power efficient as possible The system should function as a NAS for myself and close family Movie and Audio streaming Development Server Home Lab VMs Docker Services Software: OS: TrueNAS Scale Family connectivity: DuckDNS to connect to my router with dynamic IP Reverse Proxy to connect to the services which shall be exposed over the internet through DuckDNS OpenVPN for connection to development services Nextcloud for account separated access to data like photos and documents Streaming: Plex for movies and series, for audio has not been decided yet Other Info: TrueNAS with ZFS file system 2 VDEVs á 4 * 8 TB drives RAIDZ2 I am currently in the midst of configuring a home server for myself and my family and could need some advise from the pros. The use cases I have already laid out above, but it is the first time for me to create such a system. In the future I actually want to have 2 different systems, so one can just be the NAS and media streaming server and the other the development server / home lab. For now I will do everything in one single machine, out of simplicity and budgetary reasons, but of course if you see some better hardware I could use to have an easier upgrade path to a 2 system situation, please do not hesitate to point that out. I have made an initial plan on what software to use to accomplish my needs, but that of course may change in the future, I added it nonetheless because that may help some of you to have a better understanding of what I need. I have a few questions left before I want to go into buying all the parts. So I am going to lay out the planed build for you and then list the questions I have in hopes of some help from you guys, which would be greatly appreciated. My planed build: CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G CPU Cooler : Stock ? Motherboard: ASRock X570M Pro4 Memory: Crucial Pro CP2K16G4DFRA32A DDR4 RAM Kit (2x16GB) 3200MHz Boot & Cache Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD Data Storage drives: 4x Seagate IronWolf 8 TB NAS HDD Power Supply: Seasonic Vertex PX-750 ATX3.0 750W Vertex PX-750 Case: SilverStone Technology SST-CS381 v 1.2 My questions are: Is there anything you would change about this build? Knowing what it will be used for, is there anything in particular you would change? I hope I didn't mismatch any parts, but this is not my primary forte so any head ups are gladly received. What would you recommend for fan configuration? I am either going to use the Stock cooler or one from Noctua. Which one would you recommend? Other than that, I am not quite sure how many case fans I would need and in which push or pull configuration. That's why I haven't listed them above. I want to make sure that nothing gets too hot even under load, but I have no experience with it. What RAID configuration would you recommend? I have looked into this a bit and I think I want to use the ZFS file system with TrueNAS. For now I would buy four 8 TB drives which will become my first VDEV. I thought I would use the RAIDZ2 which would give me 16 TB of usable space and quite a high fault tolerance, but would that be needed? If I need more space I would add another VDEV of four drives in the same configuration. I like the data to be as save from corruption as feasible, but should I rather use RAIDZ1 or another RAID altogether. What do you think? Do I need any additionals? Like cables or something like that, which I might forget. What about GPU? I am thinking about adding a GPU for hardware transcoding for PLEX for example at some point. Is that even needed and if that is something which you would recommend, what is a good card for my configuration? OPTIONAL: Backup strategy? This is a optional question, but because family will also store data on this machine I am thinking about what I will do for backups. For me I wouldn't care too much, but with them in the mix. Are there any cloud backup services you could recommend? If not I may be just going with some good old hard drives stored with a friend. That would be all the info I could think of right now and all the questions I still have. I am more the software kinda guy, so hardware is not my real strong suit. I hope someone here can help me out a bit, so I do not make any dumb decisions and go into this as prepared as possible. Thank you all for reading and anyone helping I thank in advance also. Have a nice day stranger
Using just four hard drives for a RAID-Z2 setup isn't really the best idea because you are wasting space. There is an old rule that says you should use five, seven or eleven drives if you have room and money. https://www.truenas.com/community/t...of...ion.97202/ So I ignored this advice and put six drives on one server and eight drives on three other servers, all using TrueNAS Core RAID-Z2. Since 2018, I've only had one drive fail out of the whole bunch. TrueNAS really likes RAM. The more there is, the better it works. Any spare RAM...