Hello all I am new to this forum and to TrueNAS.
Background: I have been in IT since the 1970s (before it was even called "IT" LOL), have worked on everything from mainframes to PCs. My *nix experience though is nearly twenty years ago and I have pretty much been Windows only for the last 15 years. I have just picked up a TrueNAS machine that I wish to utilise as such, rather than building as a Windows server and a trying to get my head around how some of the technology & terminology of this system maps onto the concepts I know.
Further background: My home / home office server is an old Windows HP MIcroserver and, great system though it is, it's beginning to creak at the seams. It runs file sharing, WSUS patching, various Windows SQL databases, and Plex Media Server for our music and videos. So when the TrueNAS machine cropped up jumped on it with the idea of moving the file sharing and Plex functions to that, leaving the Windows machine to do the windows stuff. The specs of the new machine are:
Gigabyte H270N WiFi Mini ITX Motherboard
Intel Core i5-7500 Quad Core 3400MHz
Be Quiet! Pure Rock Slim CPU Cooler
8GB Memory
Corsair RM550X 550W 80 Plus Gold PSU
1 x 120GB Kingston SATA Boot SSD
1 x 500GB M.2 SSD
5 x 4TB SATA Drives
2 x 1GbE Ethernet
and it came with TrueNAS TrueNAS-12.0-RELEASE reset to default configuration.
In terms of load I have maximum six SMB clients accessing files (and only two of those use it extensively), music tends to be streaming most of the day and in the evening maybe two movies or TV shows will stream.
This is what I plan:
Create a Jail to run PMS - this I put on a pool containing the single SSD drive. My understanding is that a Jail is the equivalent of a virtual machine in Windows or VMWare is that right? I don't need any resilience for this disk, if it goes down all I lose is the PMS service and I can easily replace the drive and recreate that, correct?
The 5 4Tb I used to build a ZFS 'array' (is that a VDEV?) to hold all the data shares and the media that Plex streams. This is where I am unsure about the concepts - ZFS doesn't map to RAID arrays one to one. If I were doing this in RAID I'd build a 8Tb RAID 10 array with a hot swap. My best guess at what to do in ZFS is drop them all into a single ZFS3 array as then I am resilient to losing two disks (yes or no?). High availability is not an issue I will happily shut down to replace a failed drive - the hardware is not hot swappable. Does that make sense or is there a better way of doing it? I am also assuming in this concept that the PMS service running in its Jail can access the media files on this ZFS array is that correct?
If that's a load of rubbish I'm happy to be corrected, I'll accept any advice on a better way to do things, or if it's a good solution then I'll appreciate reassurance!
Thanks in Advance,
Graham
Background: I have been in IT since the 1970s (before it was even called "IT" LOL), have worked on everything from mainframes to PCs. My *nix experience though is nearly twenty years ago and I have pretty much been Windows only for the last 15 years. I have just picked up a TrueNAS machine that I wish to utilise as such, rather than building as a Windows server and a trying to get my head around how some of the technology & terminology of this system maps onto the concepts I know.
Further background: My home / home office server is an old Windows HP MIcroserver and, great system though it is, it's beginning to creak at the seams. It runs file sharing, WSUS patching, various Windows SQL databases, and Plex Media Server for our music and videos. So when the TrueNAS machine cropped up jumped on it with the idea of moving the file sharing and Plex functions to that, leaving the Windows machine to do the windows stuff. The specs of the new machine are:
Gigabyte H270N WiFi Mini ITX Motherboard
Intel Core i5-7500 Quad Core 3400MHz
Be Quiet! Pure Rock Slim CPU Cooler
8GB Memory
Corsair RM550X 550W 80 Plus Gold PSU
1 x 120GB Kingston SATA Boot SSD
1 x 500GB M.2 SSD
5 x 4TB SATA Drives
2 x 1GbE Ethernet
and it came with TrueNAS TrueNAS-12.0-RELEASE reset to default configuration.
In terms of load I have maximum six SMB clients accessing files (and only two of those use it extensively), music tends to be streaming most of the day and in the evening maybe two movies or TV shows will stream.
This is what I plan:
Create a Jail to run PMS - this I put on a pool containing the single SSD drive. My understanding is that a Jail is the equivalent of a virtual machine in Windows or VMWare is that right? I don't need any resilience for this disk, if it goes down all I lose is the PMS service and I can easily replace the drive and recreate that, correct?
The 5 4Tb I used to build a ZFS 'array' (is that a VDEV?) to hold all the data shares and the media that Plex streams. This is where I am unsure about the concepts - ZFS doesn't map to RAID arrays one to one. If I were doing this in RAID I'd build a 8Tb RAID 10 array with a hot swap. My best guess at what to do in ZFS is drop them all into a single ZFS3 array as then I am resilient to losing two disks (yes or no?). High availability is not an issue I will happily shut down to replace a failed drive - the hardware is not hot swappable. Does that make sense or is there a better way of doing it? I am also assuming in this concept that the PMS service running in its Jail can access the media files on this ZFS array is that correct?
If that's a load of rubbish I'm happy to be corrected, I'll accept any advice on a better way to do things, or if it's a good solution then I'll appreciate reassurance!
Thanks in Advance,
Graham