What I learned from this video is that I am vastly underutilizing my HL15by using it only as a TrueNAS device. Additionally, I wish I had known about server part deals when I was buying it, I could have saved a bundle on HDDs.
The HL15 I have, was bought as a fully assembled unit and thus isnt all that powerful, additionally I like TrueNAS and want to continue to use it and that limits what I can do with it, with the teensy bit of knowledge I have.
What is everyone else here using home servers for? Mine contains family backups, my music library lives on it, my music DVDs are ripped to it, family photos are synced to it instead of iCloud with a cool app called Photosync, my work related stuff is on it, and of course all that is easily backed up to Backblaze B2 via it’s integration with TrueNAS. I want to use it for storage of video from cameras that are in process of going up as well.
Pretty much you are doing it (I think). TrueNAS with whatever apps you want to run on it, especially now its a bit easier with Electric Eel and the Docker containers you can spin up pretty much anything you want on it. Just keep an eye on your RAM and CPU.
I am curious if anybody gathered or saw all the parts that @wendell was using in the build so far or is that coming in more detail in a future video? It looks like a really cool project, and I’d love to see his build vs the stock HL15 performance as a comparison (as their OEM build is getting a bit aged too).
I have posted a video on this topic so others know what we are discussing. I have a question for @wendell: would you use enterprise Sata hard drives or enterprise SAS hard drives for the project you are talking about? What are the advantages over SAS hard drives that Sata hard drives don’t have?
SAS’s main benefits over SATA are a much deeper queue depth so that stalls are less likely to happen, better signal integrity so that they can run longer cable lengths, more marginal cables or in increased EMI environments, also SAS has significantly better command set that is based off of SCSI instead of PATA (yes those old 40 pin flat ribbon cable’d drives) that can cope with error recovery in ways SATA would just error out.
SAS drives almost always use up more power than SATA drives though, even if they spin at the same RPM; this is because they need better controllers that also signal at a high voltage.
@twin_savage Let’s see if I understand the benefits of SAS or SATA hard drives. You get a deeper queue depth, can run longer cable lengths, and can use lower-quality cables with SAS hard drives. The drawback is that SAS hard drives use much more power than SATA. Do SAS hard drives have a longer useful lifespan? Meaning SAS hard drives will need be replaced less.
That’s a fair summary of SAS benefits. There are some more edge-cased benefits to the extended command set of SAS like block reclamation that SATA can’t do but that probably doesn’t matter much unless you get into virtualization.
In the past I’d have said yes to this question, but I don’t think higher quality, binned, parts are being used in nearline SAS drives over NL SATA drives anymore.
I think the only way this would be true today is if you compared enterprise or NL SAS drives vs consumer/desktop SATA drives, but that is an unfair comparison.
