Mini Truenas server build.

[Greg_E]

I'm looking to build a mini Truenas server for my lab, Mini ITX is pretty much a requirement here. Looking for 4 - 6 SATA ports plus a system drive of some kind, and 10gbe connection. The only other requirement is low power draw, my current lab server draws a little over 100 watts at idle and makes a bunch of noise and heat. I have an old Shuttle SV25 case that can fit a mini ITX board, I have an Icydock 5.25 to four SATA dock, plus it has a 3.5 inch floppy area where I could put in 2 more slim 2.5 inch drives.

Power can be either small ATX or a 12 volt source, the case has a 20 pin small ATX right now.

What boards are out there? I do have a pile of DDR3 RDIMM on hand, I also have a few DDR4 SODIMM on hand up to 32GB (2x16 or multiple 4gb SODIMM) that can go into a build.

I'm kind of looking at a Supermicro X10SDV-4C-TLN2F with a D-1521, but not sure this is going to be the best.

I'm trying to keep the price on this low, spending $1000+ just doesn't make sense right now, which is why I'm still hesitating on the above board. Need to buy some drives ($50+ each for 1tb or larger SSD) and do some cutting to make things fit.

The card slot pictured is going to need to be changed, so I can't get any card in there due to the IO shield for the board that I'll need to fit.

The final goal is to mini PC my lab, I don't need all the performance that I've bought with used HP DL360p Gen8, the power, heat, and noise are not justified for the amount of idle time for each unit. And they are getting old, no UEFI, etc.

 

[Greg_E]

Is an n100 enough? Topton N18 N100 has the features I want, but not sure if that processor is going to really be enough for a Truenas build. Wanting to be able to at least get up to 6gbps throughput, closer to the 10gbps would be nice.

 

[Greg_E]

Ordered the Topton board, hopefully it will be enough for my small lab, gathering other components now. Not exactly a bargain build going on here.

 

[Greg_E]

A few people looking at this, build is moving along and ready to start cutting!




I need to cut out IO shield area in the case, and also need to cut where the cables come out of the power supply so they can come out 90 degrees out the "top". The case is too small to bend them around from the end. I may also strip out some unneeded wires to reduce a little of the bulk. Also need to order some shorter SATA cables, I don't think I have any that are shorter and they are a lot of bulk, but need to get it in the case before I order.

But all 6 of the recycled spinning drives are found, the emmc I had from the HP T740 are working (with the cheapo length adapters), and only 16GB of RAM. I chickened out on the ram because some places say 32 works, but Intel lists the n100 as only 16GB. If I find that I need more, or find that I need a cache drive, I'll burn this down and make the changes.

I also need to change the fans in the Icy Dock 4x bay, they are super loud compared to the rest of the system. Loud and power hungry are two things I'm trying to fix with this device.

Running Truenas Scale 24.10.0.2.

I bought this board from a guy in Texas, cost more money than Aliexpress directly, but I got it faster and have had great support from him on some of the questions that I had. Lots of current stock on the n100 and n305 versions on Ali right now. Only thing I wish it had was an SFP+ port as opposed to the 10gbps twisted pair.

And with that, should I keep updating this thread as I build this out?

 

[Greg_E]

Done for now. Need to order some shorter SATA cables, these are way too long and adding too much bulk.

But it works for now, still may go back and cut a new IO shield panel, but probably will be too lazy to bother.

Here's some pictures, I didn't take any with the top on the case, just more aluminum so not really showing anything. Tight fit on that power supply, they definitely chose the original supply based on the case form factor and rather limited power needs for that old system.

 

[Greg_E]

Cleaned it up a little:


Much nicer with the slim and shorter cables. Bought a cheap watt meter, 46 watts while booting, sitting at 33 watts idle, a third of what the rack mount server is running at idle. I wonder how much of a drop I'd get from SSD, idle might not be much, but I'd guess that running could be lower.

Need to get some shares made and my hypervisors connected and give this a benchmark to compare with my other benchmarks.

 

[Greg_E]

Dropped 10 watts idle testing some small SSD drives, throughput and pool size made me go back to the spinning drives for now.

 

[Greg_E]

Final post on this... VMware vSphere8 lab with storage, just missing the Mikrotik CRS326-24s+2q+rm switch that is also now part of my lab. Two of these are connected to a QSFP breakout, the third a pair of DAC cables, and NAS as mentioned is 10gbase-t. These T740 also have an a+e Intel 2.5g card that I hot glued to the outside of the case, not very elegant, but functional. The built in Realtek NIC is worthless with ESXi8, no fling that I know of and not supported natively, only gigabit anyway.

 

[Greg_E]

Ok, not the last post... I've been thinking about power draw and relative performance, and remembering that this is "just a lab".

Would I be better off with a pair of 4tb nvme drives in a mirror, and then run the OS off of a 2.5 inch SSD. This would remove the fans in the 4x icy dock this way, as well as removing all the power hungry spinning drives. I'll have to price compare with the other way of thinking, might be too much for the pair of 4tb drives.

 

[Greg_E]

Update... Running 122 watts at idle as pictured, about 20 watts higher while vCenter was coming up from a power change to a 4 way splitter cord.

Building out the second shelf to get xcp-ng moved to mini (more t740) and shut down another 300watts of draw.

 

[Greg_E]

From this:


To this:



Need to make sure nothing is still using the old storage, then I can remove all of the "big lab" stuff.

VMware on the top, XCP-ng on the first three of the bottom. Not sure what the other two on the bottom will end up doing, when there is a lot of 5 for $30 each (BIOS locked), you end up with 5 of them and sort out what you will do with the other two when you get them.

 

[mobycl1ck]

Get a Dymo Letratag, you need one.

 

[Greg_E]

I have many labels printers that I can use, not a big enough problem that I care about labels. If I really care, I'll use a marker and write on the front.