Home Server recommendation

Hardware Build a PC
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Hi everyone! So I have an unraid server which I use for a variety of tasks and I wanted to seek some help in upgrading/improving my setup.

Current server configuration:

CPU: AMD 5950x
RAM: 128gb rated at 3600
GPU: RTX 3080
GPU: GT 710 which is used for Plex transcoding
1 x 10TB HDD for parity in xfs format.
1 x 10TB HDD in pool
1 x 2TB NVME SSD in pool in xfs format
1 x 1TB NVME SSD in pool in xfs format
1 x 1TB NVME SSD in pool in xfs format for cache in btrfs format

The main focus for my server is to host a postgresql database which I use for my academic research. The main database is now at roughly 1.5TB and I store table indexes on the NVME drives.

On the other hand, I also host a Plex Media Server, a Windows VM for gaming and a Ubuntu VM for research in ML and NLP.

This was set up two years ago and I hadn’t had any major issues with it so far (besides usb sticks failing on me two times). However, I have 3 major concerns:

  • my pool SSD are in xfs format and I cannot use auto-trim (I didn’t do enough research when I set it up)
  • I do not like the idea of relying on an usb stick for my unraid
  • I plan more than double to database size in the upcoming year.

My current plan would be to migrate to TrueNas SCALE as I would not relly on an usb stick anymore. Additionally, my current motherboard PCIe slots are almost fully populated and I was considering upgrading to an Epyc 2nd or 3rd gen platform to have more expansion options.

The setup of the TrueNas machine I have envisioned was:

  • 1 Pool with four 4TB SATA SSD in a Raidz2
  • 1 Pool with with 2 stripped vdezs with each containing 2 mirrored 20TB HDD, for a total of 4 drives in the pool (mostly becaus of the speed improvement)

Would be grateful if someone could comment on my plans and let me know what they think.

Thank you!

1 Like
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lol my truenas plex is basically yours but with the last gen cpu

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if you do upgrade the mobo or add in a sata expander add-in card for more ports, dont worry, you can just boot straight to a new platform just by adding all of the drives to a new system its pretty robust

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they make NVME expansion cards as well as HBAs for SATA/SAS

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I’m mostly concerned with the CPU usage in write/read intensive applications under TrueNas. Can that ever be the case if I have an intesive database write for example?

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No idea if you already have your eye on a mainboard, but here’s one to investigate (Gigabyte MZ32-AR0):
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005335844869.html
Never bought from this shop though. I did buy 2 EPYC Naples systems from Aliexpress parts, based on a 7551P CPU, Samsung 128GB RDIMM ECC RAM and H11SSL-i mainboard from Supermicro but from different shops. Mind, used 2nd or 3rd Gen EPYC is still quite hefty price-wise.

I also found a Chinese spec 4TB 2.5" SATA SSD which will be on sale next week. For a 4TB drive, quite cheap, IMO.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32595324956.html
(Kingspec is a fairly reputable manufacturer, trading for over a decade now, DO NOT confuse them with A-brand Kingston, they are not related!)

Another decent Chinese brand is Goldenfir (trading since 2015):
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32711891166.html
I do have some of their stuff, decent performance but I’m not tasking it very hard I’ll admit.

HTH!