First Proxmox/TrueNAS Core build advice for home server with low utilization

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ricoid

New Member
Jan 25, 2021
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Portland, OR
I'm building my first Proxmox/TrueNAS Core box as a low utilization, single-user home server and hoping to get some advice on my setup. The plan is to have TrueNAS Core hosted in a VM and have an HBA passed through to that VM for the 6x4TB drives to be setup as a RAID-Z2 vdev. I will have a Win10 and a couple of other Linux VMs hosted as well, eventually adding a low-end ~150W GPU passed through to the Win10 VM for lite CAD work. I plan to install Proxmox on an older 1TB HDD that I already own as I've read that Proxmox can absolutely kill an SSD if certain services are not disabled. I want to experiment before I commit an SSD to it. I am going to pass the 10Gbe ports on the MoBo through to the TrueNAS VM, but they will only be connected to a 1Gbps ethernet switch.

Case: Fractal Design Node 804 (Node 804 — Fractal Design)
PSU: Corsair RM750x (RMx Series™ RM750x — 750 Watt 80 PLUS® Gold Certified Fully Modular PSU)
MoBo: AsRock X570D4U-2L2T (ASRock Rack > X570D4U-2L2T)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3700X (https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-3700x)
Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S (NH-U12S)
RAM: 64GB total, 2x Kingston 32GB ECC DIMMs, KSM32ED8/32ME 32GB 2Rx8 4G x 72-Bit PC4-3200 CL22 288-Pin DIMM (https://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/KSM32ED8_32ME.pdf)
Boot Drive: Samsung Spinpoint 1TB HDD (SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM 3.5" Hard Drive - Newegg.com)
VM Drive: Samsung EVO 860 2TB (Samsung SSD 860 EVO | Samsung V-NAND Consumer SSD)
HBA: LSI 9300-8i (https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9300-8i)
Data Array Drives: 6x4TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS HDDs, not Pro version (https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/hdd/ironwolf/)
UPS: APC, undecided on which one yet

Here are some of my questions/concerns:
1.) Is the Corsair RM750x a decent PSU for a build like this or should I only be considering an 80+ platinum PSU?
2.) Is installing Proxmox on an HDD vs SSD a good idea or should I not be scared about installing it on an SSD?
3.) I know the Samsung EVO 860 does not have PLDP built-in, but I'm hoping that having the external UPS would be sufficient for a home server?
4.) For the LSI 9300-8i HBA, does this have to be an LSI branded card or can this be a Dell, IBM, etc. branded card that utilizes the same 9300-8i controller?
5.) Is my disk array setup decent? I like the idea of being able to lose up to 2 drives and the 4TB drives seemed to have a good price point at around $95/drive on Amazon
6.) Any advice on APC or other UPS units that work well with Proxmox/ability to trigger VMs to shutdown?
7.) I've read that for low-utilization server such as this that is only connected to 1Gbps ethernet, there is no point in considering L2ARC/ZIL. Does that seem right for this build?