Consideration between TrueNas core and Scale

Hardware Enterprise Gear
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A virtual like for your thoughts
I have been planning to deploy one of my two IBM X3550 M3 servers as Backup NAS, to backup my files from my desktop and laptop.
Here’s what I have
(System X3550 M3 7944)
With dual Xeon E5506 (4c/4t)
4x4 gb of DDR3 ECC split between the two sockets
IBM serverRAID M1015 controller for the front 4 2,5" drive bays
At the moment also looking to get another one of those serveraid cards with internal sata adapters to add some 3,5" drives, with the cables coming out of the additional NIC card slot on the rear of the chassis.

The drives are going to live on a antec case, without a side panel with their own ATX PSU.
The backup software is going to be either nextcloud or synchthing.

I had trouble installing trueNAS core on the system last time I tried

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But truenas scale booted up without a hich
But looking at this craft computing video

He does not consider it safe enough for production build. Personally the only issues I have had have been the following

  1. VM support on the Xeon E5506, allowing only one thread per VM
  2. the integrated apps not working 20-40% of the installs
    So, what do you think?
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Why get another card when you already have on channel free?
I’d be leaning more towards Core than Scale mainly because I much prefer FreeBSD and in general overall performance seems to be slightly better.

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I am assuming you meant the following
“You already have one channel free?”
Yes, in the current configuration, I have one free connector
But that is located at the front of the chassis, without a easy way to get the connection out of there, to an drive outside the chassis without running it through the rear. And since the chassis depth is over 71 cm, with 1m cable, not really any slack for the drive chassis.

4

https://www.amazon.com/SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Female-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B06ZYTC4ZG or something similar?

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If you want a server for storage, get Core.

If you want Linux, KVM and Kubernetes because your VMs/Containers don’t like Beehive and/or want to use GlusterFS for a storage cluster, get Scale.

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6

Hmm, that is an option, but the price is about the same as just getting the second serveRAID M1015

Since the price for me is 32 euros w/o VAT, and your option is does not seems to be even availlable atm. But I saw the price of around 29e, ex. VAT as well…
And even if the amazon seller claims 0% VAT, I don’t believe it for a second, since once a seller ships over 8000e of product to Finland, the VAT is paid here.
And the price for both of those adapters seem to be simular, and potetial complexity.
A good idea, a great one if I had one of those IBM/lenovo Diskshelves with those external connectors, but at my case, it does not really fit my needs.

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I did the measurements to make sure, the actual distance of internal run is about 45-50 cm, which should leave about 50cm of space cable with a 1 m cable
So, might not end up needing the seconds RAID card
I was thinking of getting this type of unit

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