HexOSish

[Duck]

With Hex still being in its beta form, it doesn't allow me the flexibility of setup that I would like. So here is what I did (it is not ideal and I would not recommend it). I found an intel server platform (Intel S2600GZ) on facebook that had 3.5 bays rather than the 1U server I had previously that had 2.5 bays, limiting my storage capabilities. I migrated all my hardware over to the intel server and got things up and running. All drives are connected to a raid controller that I tried to set in HSB via CLI command but it is still running like a normal raid controller. For now I have set up everything in single volume raid 0 in the raid controller (which means I cannot redo this set up easily so everything is being duplicated to a small 2 bay NAS for continuity of data) to get OS to see them. Not ideal but it works for now until I can get an HSB and probably new Mobo as this intel platform doesn't seem to allow too much alteration from its original intent.

I have the main OS installed on a 100gb SSD

I have 3 x 10tb in raidz1 for my main pool for all our data needs

4 x 1tb in raidz1 for steam library (not ideal but wanted to see how Hex viewed an iscsi share)

1 x 2tb single mirror for my NVR via Shinobi

I have a 250gb and 500gb NVME drives that I am going to get pci boards for and set up as cache's for my main pool and the steam pool

Because of the single mirror Hex broke so I removed the server from the hub. I will have to wait until I can skip the erasure step when setting up the server as everything was set up via the Truenas UI and I have everything set up and working for now. Have immich, wireguard, nginx, netdata, uptime, unifi and a few other containers running. Everything is working great for now and am happy with my Hex ish set up. I am probably a little more advanced for what Hex was created but I am still a novice and setting up nginx and getting that going with ssl wasn't exactly easy especially when you are using an ISP provided modem (It was the only way not to have data caps). 

 

Server is an Intel S2600GZ with dual E5-2620 and 128gb of ram with 3 x 10tb HDD, 4 x 1tb HDD, 1 x 2tb HDD, and 1 x 100gb SSD with room for expansion. Using onboard 1gb nics for now until I upgrade my switch to handle 2.5.

Edited February 10 by Duck

[Jack Kennedy West]

Nice one. Sounds like a sweet setup.

My second server is similar in that the integrated HBA/Raid Controller is limited in it's BIOS Options., So it's running Unraid with every drive set as individual Raid0's. However, my main server i discovered if i just don't set any config and leave all the drives unconfigured then they pass through as if in HBA Mode rather than Raid which was a nice surprise when setting up HexOS.

I did try NGinx and got too many headaches. Ended up going with a Cloudflare Tunnel approach which i found pretty easy to setup, worth a look as i don't believe it requires any specific router setup to work, can implement access policies etc too.

Look forward to seeing how your setup goes 🙂 

[Mobius]

I'm a bit confused, what exactly do you have as a raid0?

Also you may not need a ssd cache since you have a lot of ram.

You probably already know this but you didn't need to remove your server from deck just to use the underlying truenas.

kudos for the beefy system tho. Looking forward to seeing what you think.

[Duck]

31 minutes ago, Mobius said:

I'm a bit confused, what exactly do you have as a raid0?

Also you may not need a ssd cache since you have a lot of ram.

You probably already know this but you didn't need to remove your server from deck just to use the underlying truenas.

kudos for the beefy system tho. Looking forward to seeing what you think.

Every drive is set in the Raid Controller as a single raid0 volume so that an OS could see them.

I removed it because it was borked. I am one of those people that doesn't like red blinking lights for unread notifications and seeing the Hex ui just constantly reload because it is confused by a single drive pool drove me nuts.

The large amount of ram was the first server I had came with 64gb or ram and I added 32gb more when I grabbed some 1tb drives for it. The second server came with 32gb so I just dumped them all into the second server though I probably shouldn't mix the 8gb sticks with the 16gb sticks but everything seems to work atm (all the channels match, either both slots are 8gb or 16gb, none are mixed sizes).

[Duck]

43 minutes ago, Jack Kennedy West said:

Nice one. Sounds like a sweet setup.

My second server is similar in that the integrated HBA/Raid Controller is limited in it's BIOS Options., So it's running Unraid with every drive set as individual Raid0's. However, my main server i discovered if i just don't set any config and leave all the drives unconfigured then they pass through as if in HBA Mode rather than Raid which was a nice surprise when setting up HexOS.

I did try NGinx and got too many headaches. Ended up going with a Cloudflare Tunnel approach which i found pretty easy to setup, worth a look as i don't believe it requires any specific router setup to work, can implement access policies etc too.

Look forward to seeing how your setup goes 🙂 

I tried to leave them as unconfigured but no installer could see any drives so I just ended up setting them all up.

I was looking at Cloudflare but wanted as much to be "in house" as I could. I am slowly migrating to on prem services as much as possible. 

With my stupid ISP modem (agian, so I dont have data caps) I cannot set up ad blocking 😞

[Mobius]

4 minutes ago, Duck said:

Every drive is set in the Raid Controller as a single raid0 volume so that an OS could see them.

I removed it because it was borked. I am one of those people that doesn't like red blinking lights for unread notifications and seeing the Hex ui just constantly reload because it is confused by a single drive pool drove me nuts.

The large amount of ram was the first server I had came with 64gb or ram and I added 32gb more when I grabbed some 1tb drives for it. The second server came with 32gb so I just dumped them all into the second server though I probably shouldn't mix the 8gb sticks with the 16gb sticks but everything seems to work atm (all the channels match, either both slots are 8gb or 16gb, none are mixed sizes).

ahh
yeah hexos does freak out about single drive pools but support is incoming.
afaik hexos doesn't care too much about different sized ram, latency and speed so i think mismatching shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as your motherboard boots fine which it seems like it does.

[Jack Kennedy West]

11 minutes ago, Duck said:

I tried to leave them as unconfigured but no installer could see any drives so I just ended up setting them all up.

I was looking at Cloudflare but wanted as much to be "in house" as I could. I am slowly migrating to on prem services as much as possible. 

With my stupid ISP modem (agian, so I dont have data caps) I cannot set up ad blocking 😞

I get ya. I just liked that Cloud flare just sort of worked and I can have tunnels to multiple locations. (I have a hosted VPS too so handy for that)

Data caps sound very not fun

[Dylan]

32 minutes ago, Jack Kennedy West said:

Data caps sound very not fun

I'd riot in the streets over that one.