Setup unclear

[Maxiboy44]

Hey, it would be awesome to get a recommendation for you about my setup options.

I have 2 spare machines:
- Current Server:
i7 CPU
2x GTX 960
2TB HDD
4TB HDD

- Feetholder:
i5 CPU
GTX 950
1TB Drive

- New Drives
240GB SSD for HexOS
4TB Drive


My needs:
I currently run debian on my server and host a few websites via docker, as well as my routing via nginx. Everything is managed in portiner where possible, some of them have custom files on the os.
One of the Apps is Nextcloud. I want to replace the Nextcloud instance with a NAS and a immich service, as well as plex for my videos/movies.  (A AI is also running on it, cause this the 2 GPUS)


Current consideration:
Do I fuse everything to a 
i7 CPU
2x GTX 960
2TB HDD
4TB HDD
240GB SSD for HexOS
4TB Drive
1TB Drive

System or do I do 

Server for websites with debian
i7 CPU
2x GTX 960
2TB HDD

Server for NAS:
i5 CPU
GTX 950
1TB Drive
4TB HDD
240GB SSD for HexOS
4TB Drive

(or reverse)


Best for electricity is the first but I dont know if I will be able to host my webistes on the HexOS without weird workarrounds.

What do you think, how would you solve this?

Thx a loot

max 🙂
 

[Magnus]

Hi there! I would hazard a guess and say you should be able to do everything you want with a single machine (just remember we're still in beta).

Only other recommendation I would mention is to have 3 same size drives for your storage pool, as this lets you expand it later!

[MSKenyon]

When you say 3 HDDs, you mean 1 for redundancy and 2 for storage? Just trying to make this as clear in my head as possible.

[dinecoj]

 

1 hour ago, MSKenyon said:

When you say 3 HDDs, you mean 1 for redundancy and 2 for storage?

@MSKenyon If you have a pool of three 4TB drives you would have ~8TB of storage. It isn't exactly as binary as "1 for redundancy and 2 for storage", since all three drives contain some data and parity information. In practice, this allows you to lose one drive while maintaining data integrity. This is raid level 5  (Raid Z1 in ZFS).  HexOS will create pools in Raid Z1. 

 

As @Magnus mentioned, you can't expand a pool of two drives since they're mirrored, so it is recommended to create a pool with a minimum of three drives.

Additionally, you would want your pool drives to be the same size, as I'm not sure if HexOS would create a pool with mismatched drive sizes.

[MSKenyon]

Huh. Think you for responding.

 

one more, while I have your attention. Does this mean I would need to use 3 of the same size? I was under the impression my parity drive needs to be the largest. But this might be a confusion on my part.

 

-- Matt

[dinecoj]

5 minutes ago, MSKenyon said:

Does this mean I would need to use 3 of the same size?

For the pool, yes, drives should to be the same size. I believe drives can be mismatched in pools when set up directly in TrueNAS, but HexOS will not do this by default and I'm not sure how tolerant it would be. You will be limited to the size of your smallest drive, so for a pool of 2x10TB drives and a 1x1TB drive, your effective capacity is only 2TB. 

Parity information is distributed among the drives equally in Raid5 / RaidZ1. I'm simplifying, but this is how I understand it: for a 1GB file, disk 1 and disk 2 will have 500MB of data and disk 3 will have 500MB (?) of parity info. For another 1GB file, disks 2 and 3 may have the data, and disk 1 stores the parity info. Because of the distribution of parity, all three drives should are only as good as the smallest drive. In the example above, the 1TB drives runs out of space for parity / data before the others, so the pool is only limited to storing 2TB

[MSKenyon]

Thank you for the info. Your a gentleman and a scholar, and theirs few of us left.

 

-- Matt

[ubergeek]

If it was me I would keep them separated.  I mean my dev box and other vms are in a dell r730 and all the storage is being pushed by a i3 8350k. I know the power usage would be more if I loaded the 730 down along side the other vms due to overall heat and processing power used.