The_Hawkeye Posted January 22 Posted January 22 Hi I'm currently running a win10 Ent. machine as a NAS/Server for many years without issues. Yes, I know this is far from "optimal" but it works for me. Over time it's been tuned so well, that it is now in a state in which I want to touch and change as little as possible. Unfortunately with the EOL of Win10 in October, I might not have choice... Therefore I'm thinking of changing to HexOS as an alternative. I do have several questions, challenges I see and I hope you guys can help resolve them and allow me to prep the new system. This is a long post, so apologies and many thanks for reading in advance! Current hardware: MB: Asus Maximus ranger VIII - Z170 CPU: Intel 7700T GPU: n/a (on-board) RAM: 16GB - DDR4 - 2133 MHz NIC: Intel I225 LM - 2.5Gbit network controller Boot-disk: Sasmung 830 - 256 SATA SSD HDDs - Total capacity: 41TB - Currently no RAID ! WD Green: 3TB (40% full) - my personal files and photos are on here and are backed-up off site at Hetzner WD RED: 4TB (58% full) Seagate baracuda: 4TB (23% full) WD RED Pro : 12 TB (54% full) WD RED Pro: 14 TB (64% full) WD Mybook: 4TB (32% full) - external - for back-up DVD-RW drive for back-in up physical media Next to the fact that Microsoft has decided to no longer support this hardware going forward, I still feel that is perfectly capable to perform the tasks that I want it to do. So I would like to keep the hardware for a least a few more years and not just turn it all into e-waste. The services/features I'm running: NAS for personal documents (no docs stored on my other machines) & photo storage (my full RAW collection that I edit in Light-room on another machine) - WD RED 4TB drive PLEX server - 12 + 14 TB WD Red pro drives PLEX adjacent services: SONARR, RADARR, BAZARR, JACKETT, TAUTULLI Qbittorrent for my Linux ISO's - 4TB WD RED + 4TB Seagate PIA VPN for all internet access, with some services like PLEX in SPLIT tunnel Service I would like to add: Nextcloud instance, I currently rent a nextcloud service at Hetzner in Germany (2TB) Other things I use the machine for: Backing up CDs using: Exact Audio Copy Backing up DVD: DVD Decryptor / Make MKV Downloading Youtube video: Free Youtube Download So now on to the potential HEXOS version of this machine: Does my current hardware (MB / CPU / RAM) support HEXOS ? Some of the services I run today are only compatible in Windows (e.g. Exact Audio copy), is my hardware capable of running a (Win11) VM on top of HEX OS + my other apps that will run natively (PLEX, SONARR, etc.) I fully realize that my current mis-match and no RAID setup is the absolute opposite of what HEXOS is doing. So what would be your proposed solutions ? As cost effective as possible please? Create 2 pools? e.g. 2x 4TB drives into a mirror pool for my personal data Add a new additional 12TB drive to create a 3 drive pool for my Linux ISO's (losing 2TB on one drive) Create 1 new pool: Investing in 3x new 18TB drives ? or other ? I only have 1 HEXOS license and 1 set of hardware to mount the disks, transferring over this amount of data it almost seems I will require two machines up and running? >> What would be the proposed method of transferring the data onto the new drive pools? Is there a way of temporarily mounting a drive into HEXOS to copy the data over to the new created pool ? Is there a know way of backing up/ maintaining the databases of PLEX, SONARR, etc from Windows and copying them over into new the new HEXOS versions? Other tips of things you guys think of I'm overlooking? As you can see, I'm really new to all of this! Any help and advice will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Hawkeye Quote
Mobius Posted January 22 Posted January 22 5 hours ago, The_Hawkeye said: So now on to the potential HEXOS version of this machine: Does my current hardware (MB / CPU / RAM) support HEXOS ? Yes it is supported 5 hours ago, The_Hawkeye said: Some of the services I run today are only compatible in Windows (e.g. Exact Audio copy), is my hardware capable of running a (Win11) VM on top of HEX OS + my other apps that will run natively (PLEX, SONARR, etc.) I believe your system should have no issues running a single vm but adding some more ram would no hurt. 5 hours ago, The_Hawkeye said: I fully realize that my current mis-match and no RAID setup is the absolute opposite of what HEXOS is doing. So what would be your proposed solutions ? As cost effective as possible please? Create 2 pools? e.g. 2x 4TB drives into a mirror pool for my personal data Add a new additional 12TB drive to create a 3 drive pool for my Linux ISO's (losing 2TB on one drive) Create 1 new pool: Investing in 3x new 18TB drives ? or other ? at this moment hexos requires a minimum of 2 drives per pool but in a future update single drive pools will be supported. i don't know how long itll take for support to arrive but waiting for support is your most cost effective option personally i always advocate for fewer but larger drives to save on power costs (it really adds up) but doing your 2 pool method will be more cost effective 5 hours ago, The_Hawkeye said: I only have 1 HEXOS license and 1 set of hardware to mount the disks, transferring over this amount of data it almost seems I will require two machines up and running? >> What would be the proposed method of transferring the data onto the new drive pools? Is there a way of temporarily mounting a drive into HEXOS to copy the data over to the new created pool ? This is an issue a lot of us have. The easiest solution is having 2 machines. If you have another windows machine i would just plug the drives into that and transfer the data over one step at a time The other solution is renting cloud storage for a month but for that amount of storage, not only is it expensive but itll take a long time uploading and downloading the data. 6 hours ago, The_Hawkeye said: Is there a know way of backing up/ maintaining the databases of PLEX, SONARR, etc from Windows and copying them over into new the new HEXOS versions? the arr stack has a backup function but i can't attest to how well it works myself. also not sure how well plex migration works but they have a support page for it https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/ 6 hours ago, The_Hawkeye said: Other tips of things you guys think of I'm overlooking? Make sure any drives you plan to use with hexos are not smr drives. CMR drives are more ideal. 1 Quote
The_Hawkeye Posted January 23 Author Posted January 23 @Mobius Thanks a lot for your in-depth answers! It's really helpful going forward! Quote
The_Hawkeye Posted January 24 Author Posted January 24 @Mobius one more question is I may. Seeing that I have limited hardware... Is it possible to install HEXOS on a boot drive using old temporary HW that still have around (MB/CPU, etc), Create my pools on the temp system, installing all the apps I need Transfer the data from my current server over to the temp system, a bit a the time And then when all is done, transfer the HEXOS boot drive + the pooled drives (incl. data) to the hardware that makes up my system today. How would this work with the license ((I have only 1) ? How does HEXOS react to HW changes ? Quote
Mobius Posted January 24 Posted January 24 When doing things with 1 license you would have to mostly do stuff on truenas for the side without a license. That said at this time HexOS does not support importing of existing pools. So you cannot make a temp boot drive and later replace it with a different one. Importing pools is a feature that will eventually be supported. It might be possible if you clone your temp boot drive on to your permanent boot drive but I've heard some users not be able to get it to work Hexos is pretty good with hardware changes that is not the boot drive Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.