Homelab server setup

[creaky]

I am in the process of setting up a homelab server and need some advice around which drives to use, I already have the following

1 x 2TB WD Red
1 x 250GB Samsung EVO 860

I was planning on getting a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 drive for the boot device and another 250GB Samsung EVO 860 to use as VM storage.

Mass storage will be handled by the 2TB WD Red and a separate NAS I already have with a NFS share. I will not be using a cluster in this setup.

Will these drives work without major issues as they are consumer grade drives or would I need something better.

 

[guletz]

Hi,

Will these drives work without major issues as they are consumer grade drives or would I need something better.

This depends if for you is ok to make a fresh reinstall if yours hdd/ssd will be broken. Anyway you can save your VM/CT on the NAS via nfs. So for a reinstall you could easily restore your PMX VM/CTs.
If you ask me I would use NAS/Video Surveillance class HDD because are much better as home use HDD.
In any case it is a good ideea to make a intensive write/read test with all of yours HDDs for several days, before load them with real data.

By the way, what do you want to run in this homelab? Sorry for this question but I am curious like ... a cat

 

[creaky]

I'll be running a number of vm's such as

Pihole
Local web server for testing
Plex server
Backup server
Observing or similar

Plus anything else I throw at it. Just moving to a new role in IT and using this to learn with.

 

[WhiteStarEOF]

Will these drives work without major issues as they are consumer grade drives or would I need something better.

As far as storage goes, I personally use all consumer grade disks for my own builds, and for my small business clients. Honestly, I don't even use any of the special Reds or Purples or Golds or whatevers. I haven't seen any tests that show these drives provide any additional performance, or drive reliability. I just chalk those up to being a gimmick that drive manufacturers use to get a little more scratch from the home-rolled NAS community.

If you're big into WD Reds, though, you might look into drive shucking. Apparently Western Digital puts Reds in their external drive products, which are often significantly cheaper than just buying the Reds themselves.

 

[creaky]

As far as storage goes, I personally use all consumer grade disks for my own builds, and for my small business clients. Honestly, I don't even use any of the special Reds or Purples or Golds or whatevers. I haven't seen any tests that show these drives provide any additional performance, or drive reliability. I just chalk those up to being a gimmick that drive manufacturers use to get a little more scratch from the home-rolled NAS community.

If you're big into WD Reds, though, you might look into drive shucking. Apparently Western Digital puts Reds in their external drive products, which are often significantly cheaper than just buying the Reds themselves.

Only using a Red as it's from the NAS after upgrading it's drives.

Think I'll stick with the drives I e got and see what happens, will take plenty of backups.

 

[guletz]

I haven't seen any tests that show these drives provide any additional performance, or drive reliability. I just chalk those up to being a gimmick that drive manufacturers use to get a little more scratch from the home-rolled NAS community.

As general speaking, some difference exists:
- firmware is different, and you can see that bad blocks are faster recover from spare blocks reserv for NAS/Enterprise class disks
- SCT is unavailable for home-user disks class(very usefull for any RAID config)
- the max number of unrecover errors blocks / data read

And take a look here(93878 = Power_On_Hours = more then 10 years). I have 2 pcs

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K1000
Device Model: Hitachi HUA721050KLA330
Serial Number: GTE400P6XXXXX
Firmware Version: GK6OA74A
User Capacity: 500.107.862.016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1
Local Time is: Wed Oct 17 10:32:01 2018 EEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity
was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (8579) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 143) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x003f) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 016 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0004 100 100 054 Old_age Offline - 77
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 117 117 024 Pre-fail Always - 426 (Average 424)
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 86
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000a 100 100 067 Old_age Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0004 136 136 020 Old_age Offline - 31
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 087 087 000 Old_age Always - 93878
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 060 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 86
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 154
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 154
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 146 146 000 Old_age Always - 41 (Lifetime Min/Max 17/50)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x000a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged