Noob here, fell into the PVE rabbit hole a couple of weeks ago on my OptiPlex micro and hoping to consolidate existing hardware into a single server to save on power consumption.
Server spec:
4U chassis with space for 10x 2.5''/3.5'' drive
Ryzen pro 5750G
Asus TUF gaming x570-plus(8x SATA, 2x NVME m.2)
2 x 32GB ECC UDIMM
Quadro P2000(PCIe)
Available disks: 2 x 1.92tb 2.5'' SATA SSD Enterprise, 2 x 500gb NVME m.2 SSD, 8 x 6TB WD Red. Spare PICe HBA card(8x SATA), I'd rather not using it for simplicity and power draw.
VM/Container:
Home Assistant
Zigbee2MQTT
Blue Iris
TrueNAS
Plex, pihole, etc.
Ideally, I need 4x SATA HDD directly passed to TrueNAS for file/media storage(raidz2), 2-4x SATA HDD directly passed to Blue Iris for CCTV footage(don't need redundency).
Given my needs and available hardware how would you configure the boot drive and VM drive?
1. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for OS, 2x 2.5'' SATA SSD raid1 for VM/container, this gives me 6x available HDD slots without HBA card. Upgrade to bigger HDDs.
2. 1x NVME m.2 zfs/ext4 for OS, 1x NVME m.2 zfs/ext4 for VM/container, this gives me 8x available HDD slots without HBA card.
3. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for OS, 1x 2.5'' SATA SSD zfs/ext4 for VM/container, this gives me 7x available HDD slots without HBA card.
4. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for VM/container, 1x 2.5'' SATA SSD zfs/ext4 for OS, this gives me 7x available HDD slots without HBA card.
5. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for OS, 2x 2.5'' SATA SSD raid1 for VM/container, plus HBA card which gives me 8x HDD slots and consumes extra 20w-50w because it prevents the system from entering lower power states. This defeats the main purpose of hardware consolidation.
I have a spare Dell R740 I plan to run only during the day when the sun's shining(solar) to backup VM/container and PVE config via PBS, and I hope to be able to migrate the whole Ryzen server to this one in case the former is down for whatever reason.
If I do decided to go route 2, 3 or 4, is it easier to run zfs or ext4 in terms of disk life and ease of restoration? I know there are things you can do like disabling HA/cluster, log2ram to minimize zfs write to disk, but if I don't plan to tinker or expand the volume in the future, is it better to just run ext4?
Server spec:
4U chassis with space for 10x 2.5''/3.5'' drive
Ryzen pro 5750G
Asus TUF gaming x570-plus(8x SATA, 2x NVME m.2)
2 x 32GB ECC UDIMM
Quadro P2000(PCIe)
Available disks: 2 x 1.92tb 2.5'' SATA SSD Enterprise, 2 x 500gb NVME m.2 SSD, 8 x 6TB WD Red. Spare PICe HBA card(8x SATA), I'd rather not using it for simplicity and power draw.
VM/Container:
Home Assistant
Zigbee2MQTT
Blue Iris
TrueNAS
Plex, pihole, etc.
Ideally, I need 4x SATA HDD directly passed to TrueNAS for file/media storage(raidz2), 2-4x SATA HDD directly passed to Blue Iris for CCTV footage(don't need redundency).
Given my needs and available hardware how would you configure the boot drive and VM drive?
1. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for OS, 2x 2.5'' SATA SSD raid1 for VM/container, this gives me 6x available HDD slots without HBA card. Upgrade to bigger HDDs.
2. 1x NVME m.2 zfs/ext4 for OS, 1x NVME m.2 zfs/ext4 for VM/container, this gives me 8x available HDD slots without HBA card.
3. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for OS, 1x 2.5'' SATA SSD zfs/ext4 for VM/container, this gives me 7x available HDD slots without HBA card.
4. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for VM/container, 1x 2.5'' SATA SSD zfs/ext4 for OS, this gives me 7x available HDD slots without HBA card.
5. 2x NVME m.2 raid1 for OS, 2x 2.5'' SATA SSD raid1 for VM/container, plus HBA card which gives me 8x HDD slots and consumes extra 20w-50w because it prevents the system from entering lower power states. This defeats the main purpose of hardware consolidation.
I have a spare Dell R740 I plan to run only during the day when the sun's shining(solar) to backup VM/container and PVE config via PBS, and I hope to be able to migrate the whole Ryzen server to this one in case the former is down for whatever reason.
If I do decided to go route 2, 3 or 4, is it easier to run zfs or ext4 in terms of disk life and ease of restoration? I know there are things you can do like disabling HA/cluster, log2ram to minimize zfs write to disk, but if I don't plan to tinker or expand the volume in the future, is it better to just run ext4?
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