Hi, I wanted to start selfhosting and I’d like to have your opinion on something that I’m struggling to decide.

I don’t plan to tinker too much with my system, I’ve been a Linux tinkerer myself some time ago but now I’d like to setup something that’s really bulletproof and then leave it running (ofc I know I’ll have to do a bit of bugfixing now and then), not replacing hardware ideally for >= 10 years.

This is why I’m planning to use TrueNAS, and that’s why I’m planning to buy a UGREEN DXP2800: has two 3,5" HDD bays (4TB should be enough for me for the next 8-10 years, so I’ll have two 4TB disks in RAID1 or mirror or whatever is recommended). Only problem I have with this machine is that it only has 1 RAM slot, and I guess 8 GB isn’t enough if I use zfs. So I’ll have to upgrade to either 16 or 32 GB. Now I did my research and from my understanding 16GB seems to be enough, but it would be such a waste having to replace the whole RAM if it turns out it isn’t enough.

For reference, I don’t plan on having more than 7-8 services running: Immich, Nextcloud+office, firefly, audiobookshelf, paperless and a maybe few more if they’re useful. I value responsiveness but it’s ok if some things take longer to process (thinking immich ML, or stuff like transcoding)

I’m very interested to know your opinion:

  • is the dxp2800 a good choice?
  • should I go with 16 or 32 GB RAM?

And a little extra

  • how much ssd space do you recommend for high speed data? is 500gb enough?

Thank you so much!

  • non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 hours ago

    A dual disk setup for ZFS (or any other kind of RAID) is super wasteful.

    Based on what? I’ve been running ZFS since it was Solaris-only and raidz1/raidz2 are OK, but they come with complexity and performance penalties, and they’re somewhat less portable than a mirror. There are many advantages to simple mirrors: first-response reads, block correction, scrubs, etc.

    • fonix232@fedia.io
      1·
      6 hours ago

      Portability is not really an aspect one needs to consider when it comes to a NAS. Performance hits? Z1 will have performance issues when running in a simple mirror (especially for writes), but with 4+ disks that reduces significantly.

      Sure scrubs will take longer on a multi-disk array, but again for a home NAS, the goal is maximising data storage capacity without a major hit on performance, ideally being able to saturate the most common gigabit LAN connection and have some more bandwidth available for local processing.

      • non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        Portability is not really an aspect one needs to consider when it comes to a NAS

        Hard disagree, and it is one of the best things about ZFS. You can plunk a ZFS pool on another system and be almost certain it will import. Systems die. Having been through several data-loss incidents, I find it is much preferable to be able to pull 1 disk than have to drag out 2 or three to transplant a ZFS pool.

        Regarding the scrubs, I was trying to indicate that ZFS is more than just a raid manager, there are advantages to ZFS on even a single disk.

        for a home NAS, the goal is maximising data storage capacity without a major hit on performance

        If that were entirely true, striping would be the most popular ZFS pool arrangement, since you get performance and max storage.

        Edit: this was not to say “you’re wrong”, just different approaches to storage.