WilliamsKnights

First server I setup to test HexOS was a HP N54L. I had upgraded ram to 8GB, Flashed BIOS to support hotswap and full SATA speeds, put in SSD for boot and 4x 3TB Seagate drives for data. I used to use it as a Windows 2012 R2 server prior but thought I'd give HexOS a go. Server ran fine for HEXOS as a NAS ONLY. I was able to setup file shares and users with no issues. Performance was pretty good also for data transfers. I failed completely to get either Plex or Immach to run even after 3 full reinstalls. I don't know if it has anything to do with the N54L or HeXOS/Truenas on this server but it never completed the installs. No errors. Drives setup, binaries present. just non running apps. Not had the issue on my more modern Gen 10 HP Microserver or other servers I have tried HEXOS on. Something about the N54L just did not like running apps on truenas. Your experience may vary. But as anything more than a basic NAS, I think the N54L is no longer viable.

As long as you check on the heat and airflow thee location of drives and order you populate should be unimportant. Obviously if you put all the drives together you will create a hotspot. but as long as you have sufficient airflow over that area it should not matter. I agree with @mawson Better to keep them together as you populate so as to avoid interfering with them when you add more drives. SATA/SAS connectors are not the strongest. so the less movement they have the better.

My experience is from datacenter usage. I have over 30 years experience in IT. Mainly supporting IT in the financial sector where IT expenditure is high. My first hard disk was a 20MB model. In my day job I currently consume over 35PB. I have seen it all. Hard cards, Hard Disks, Direct attached storage, 30 rack storage vaults. Take below with a pinch of salt. It's my thoughts only as very little is proven in this field. So much has moved to flash these days. Tiered storage layers are used with most used data being on flash and less used moving to slower layers. I checked with 2 companies we use. (cannot use names here but they are leaders in there fieldsa), generally all spinning hard drives are left with manufacturer defaults and not configured to perform additional or custom spin down operations. There are some outlying use cases where they do this. this such as long term storage vaults where read and write operations are minimal and delays can be planned around in software and OS levels. When we had storage in servers. Generally it was not a good idea to power down or spin down drives. Drives normally store 2 values. Power on cycles and running hours. BOTH are used to gauge wear and tear. It was generally accepted practice to leave it up to the drive manufacturer to set this up in firmware. You would buy the best drive for your situation. Manufacturers such as WD and Seagate have drives for differing uses. Often it's just a firmware change. Other times it can be componentry. All depending on planned usage. A drive setup to spin up and down generally have lower warranties than those set to spin uninterrupted. Perhaps this could also be used as a gauge to what's likely to be better. So for a hard disk. It's a mechanical item. It takes high power to spin up but low power to maintain it spinning. Even a warm 'at temperature' bearing takes less energy to spin than a cold one. But the energy levels are tiny. Some people use a calculation such as 1 hrs spinning = 1 spin up cycle but this has never been proven as far as I'm aware. There are to many other factors to consider. Temperature, even elevation all have an impact. Also. If you have SMART features enabled. this can force a spin up cycle when SMART stats are updated. Even TrueNAS will force a spin up every now and then to check on drives. There is no hard and fast rule. The most important thing is to look at your usage and make a decision. If you are setting up a plex server that will only be used on weekends. then there is an argument that spinning down for 5 days is fine. If your usage is you will be using 10-50 times a day then leave it spinning etc. My Personal Bias I used to focus on running costs at home. All my servers had power meters. I even got into the rabbit hole of how much energy a philips hue light used when turned off. (this is shockingly higher than expected, especially when you have all lights converted to smart lights). I used to have a HP N54L packed with hard disks. It was just a plex server and I was aggressive with spin down cycles. I purchased Seagate 3TB Barracuda drives as at the time they were best £ per TB. They had a 4 Year warranty. I lost 2 of the 4x 3TB Seagate drives within 5 years. Seagate warranty had expired. Was this down to aggressive spin down or the fact I has desktop drives in a NAS? I have no idea. I have now moved to a bigger multi core multi drive for my home servers. I now have NAS grade drives in my NAS and set them to defaults when it comes down to spin down. Yes this may cost me £10-£20 a year more in costs. But I have had no drive failures (yet) and feel happier overall.

I'd also like to see the priority list for hexos themselves. What are they working on. What is priority list etc. I know if may be fast paced during beta. But I'd love to know what the direction is and I think it's what people enrolled in beta want to see

Thanks for the long post. It's great to see it just working. I'm in this as I'm fed up tinkering and just want something to work. I'm an IT professional with over 30 years in the field. I could figure it out. No concerns there. I just have better things to be getting on with, Family, cycling etc. I already spend at least 60 hrs a week in front of a PC. I just wanted a click and use solution for home. Looking forward to the buddy back features and slowly moving services local.

OK.. so here is the thing. Yes. HT can add to power consumption. but as you state it can reduce the time taken to perform a task. That is if that task can take advantage of the hyperthreading. Not all tasks are suited to HT. So it's 100% dependant on the type of load you are placing on the CPU, what other tasks are ongoing and how the code is written. There is no single rule that fits them all. There are other things going on that can have a significantly bigger fluctuation on power draw. Differing hard disks can have differing initial spin up power requirements. even same brand, same model, different firmware. Same for power supplies. Same manufacturer, same model but different production run can impact power efficiency. I work in IT for a company with over 40,000 servers. Power consumption is something we monitor actively on our non cloud servers. (Who cares about the cloud power costs?). One of my specialities is Database systems (infra DBA not APP DBA). Systems under my management have over 140,000 CPU cores. We have HT enabled on around 75% of the estate. We tried disabling HT to see if it had any power impact. It did. Overall things took longer and the overriding view was MORE power was consumed with HT disabled. I also manage middleware teams. HT had a lesser impact as the apps were less parallelized. here Disabling HT has a VERY SMALL impact to power draw. Not enough for us to spend the time implementing changes to disable further. The areas where we disabled HT and left disabled were relating to security over performance and/or power. Hope that helps.

I'm interested also. I have never worked out if Spinrite is snake oil or actually worth it? Gibson research Corp has been around for a loooong time. And they have produced some amazing tools over the years. So I'm tempted to trust them. But they claim spinrite it will prolong life and improve performance. It effectively rewrites ALL the data on a drive. So that increases wear and shortens the life overall.. I just cannot get my head around it. I think if it's a low usage drive. it may be worth it. I'd love to see a proper review or feedback from others on if it's used much

agreed. need to go back to good old fashioned white paper with black text.

this is listed in the terms https://hexos.com/terms

they have this documented in terms of service https://hexos.com/terms "HexOS licenses enable users to claim servers for management. A claimed server deducts an available license from your account. If you wish to move your license to a new server, you must first disconnect the server from HexOS, which will return the availability of the license for claiming purposes." However with the early bird pricing I purchased 2 to make this easier. I expect to be switching hardware quite a but in the early years.

Couldn't agree more. This needs to be enabled. It's no longer a nice to have feature on sites.

I think it only right that multi factor authentication on accounts be something that gets implemented relatively quickly. The simple Username/Password for the account is very 90's With HEXOS being relatively new and gaining a lot of attention. Last thing you want is negative publicity due to weak security posture. some sort of MFA should be standard option.