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Change owner of server, start new server on new system


bacardi8

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bacardi8

Hi Cayars,

I actually started out with looking into Truenas some time ago, first at the core version, then the scale version, but I did not continue since this was still Beta.

Later on I also read about that the things I would be in need of for my NAS is stable already in the Beta stage, so yes I agree, it's definitely worth trying out.

Furthermore the latest news is that a new feature is coming soon, that allows a ZFS user to expand the size of a single RAIDz vdev.

Currently I think for many of us small home users Truenas is seen as an expensive choice, due to that you need all discs for your storage in same size and in advance,

and expanding is expensive and not easy, so these latest news will probably loosen up a little by many.

With my current hardware I'm a kind of ready to try/run it, specially also due to that my server is still new and empty, so no risk there.

I will try it out.

 

BTW, 

Last night I tried to install Garuda Linux (Gnome Version) just to see how it looks like and how its running. Must say I'm impressed.

Very nice to install, detecting of all hard drives and all fans at first boot, amazing look, easy navigation, feels very fast, smooth updating, smooth and fast install/uninstall of programs, etc.

This is just a first and fast look, I don't know how it will perform with big storage and dockers installed, but its a nice first look for sure.

 

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Yes the RAIDz expansion.  I've done some testing of this in other distros and it does work, but comes with a caveat.
Say you have a vdev of 4 drives in ZFS1 (raid 5) that is 90% full and add a 5th drive.  It adds it but then you have:
4 drives at 90% and 1 drive at 0% full.

It doesn't at least for now to a rebalance job. The current thinking is that all new writes will use all drives as normal so long term from read/write access it will self balance.  The problem with this is that if each drive were 10 TB that would mean 4 drives have 2 TB left on them.  So you add 2 TB of media and now find it's full. Well 4 are full and 1 drive has 8 TB free.

It's kind of a quirk but actually not really a bad quirk.  You can setup a job to read/write or do a light touch of each file to get them to write again over the newly spanned disks. That could even allow you do do it in batches instead or scheduled to happen from 2am to 6am for example.  The only downside to this is that each file gets updated time stamps. That of course would have Emby rescan libs, could have your backup program trying to reprocess all "new" files which wouldn't be welcome especially if backup up to a cloud service.

I'm sure these is a better way to do this but I was mostly interested in how it worked under the hood.  TrueNAS could very well do this themselves if not part of the standard repository.

It's still a better way then how Synology does this using btrfs with it's hybrid RAID (SHR) which doesn't claim to stripe against all disks.  All it guarantees is that you will get one parity or two (5,6) which might mean writing all data on one disk (new disk to start filling it) and parity to another disk (5) or parity to 2 disks (6).  This method is not ideal at all and can really hurt your performance.

I've been noticing my NAS seems to be getting slower.  I started out with 2 to 4 TB drives playing with it, then upgraded them to 8 TB drives one by one, to a combination 10 & 12 TB, to all drives being 14TB.  These were all 5400 RPM disks with many of the larger models shucked from WD USB3 external drives.  I recently upgraded the first drive of the array to 18 TB.
image.thumb.png.d51a3a46a79d7275c33f741798ccfc59.png

What's worse is that it took 3 days to rebuild the new drive then nearly 2 weeks of constant data scrubbing which just finished today before I got a Healthy volume status.
Synology does btrfs (hybrid RAID) different than most but it's painful doing drive upgrades as your drive sizes get larger!  I know I would personally welcome the way ZFS does this expansion as you could have it reprocessing data during off hours until it completes. ZFS also does rebuilds a much better way as well. You leave the old drive in the system while doing the repair as often when a drive goes bad it's not the whole drive but only parts.  So it can still use the drive for data that is returned promptly and matches parity while not using data that fails parity or times out.  That both keeps things running faster as well as help load your hot swap drive quicker.  It also shows that a "failed drive" isn't always dead and can be used for recovery some times.  So even a raid 5 or zfs1 pool with 2 "failed" drives can often mostly be fixed (things the two drives can return data for) which is better then a crashed volume.

Yep, we already talked about using a standard Linux distro on the machine which certainly can be done.  The only bad part about that with fancy desktops is that you start using them as a desktop vs just as management.  That's one advantage of using anything web based as it forces you to use it for just management without bloating it with many programs installed.  That's what VMs are for anyway.  Load up 2 or 3 different Linux Desktops in VMs with access to the storage pools and you have the best of both worlds.

Glad to see you starting to dig in, play and experience this.

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bacardi8

Yes I agree regarding the difference between desktop and management OS.

Last night I got Truenas Scale installed, also here I'm impressed. After some issues during install all is now fine and seams to run very smooth.

Nice web interface, smooth and fast navigation, all discs detected, so I will try to stay on this for now. 

There is still not so much info around for beginners on the Scale version, but by comparing with the Core version I think a lot of the setup and functions are very similar,

so I tried so far to take a lot of information's from there. As I can see, there is different ways how people is setting up their system and pools, which left me with some questions

regarding my own setup. My server will mainly act as a full media server, but still with the possibilities to run some VM machines, run some backups, etc.

So how do I start to set that up correctly..??  (Available drives : 4 x 14TB, 3 x 1TB, 1 x 480GB).

 - should programs/containers (Emby, Plex, etc) have their own ssd and own pool, to separate these from the OS and from the main storage...???

 - should one ssd drive have own pool to be used as cache drive, is that necessary...??

 - should one ssd drive have own pool to be used as backup/snapshots only...??

 - should one ssd drive have own pool to be used for VM machines only...???

 - should the 3 x 1TB ssd's run in a Raidz and cover all of the above questions...??

My own thinking

1) 4 x 14TB is main storage of all media, could be a pool named Tank with "media" as dataset. (this dataset "media" would then be the shared folder I guess) nothing else in this pool.

2) Create a pool for all appdata (Emby, Plex, etc)  by using one of the ssd's available.

3) Create a pool for VM machines by using one of the ssd's available.

4) Create a pool for backup by using one of the ssd's available.

I don't know if this is possible and also if it is a good way to start out, please let me hear your suggestions.

 

 

 

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I would think you likely want the host itself on SSD which could also be where programs/plugins are run from from like Emby.

Containers and VMs should be able to use your existing pool I believe.  I would need to check on this specifically as I play with so many OS I sometimes can't remember specific things like this.  If that is true I'd think it really comes down to you more than the OS itself.  3 to 6 container/VMs likely isn't worth having their own slice of storage but if you plan to have lots of them or snapshots then it could make sense to separate things.

This is one of the reasons is good to dive in a and play a bit as it's a great question to ask. One thing to keep in mind when reading up on things like this online is the size/kind of system the person has setup storage wise. A person with 4 or 5 disks isn't going to have the luxury of flexibility the person with 15 to 25 disks has. With more disks comes flexibility.

I would certainly read up and try/test snapshots and backups to see if either of those need or would heavily benefit from something special disk wise.

You actually just about at the point where you're on your own with these decisions based on what you see performance wise or organization wise as long as you aren't doing something outside the scope of normal.

 

I would for sure setup 2 or 3 VMs even if it's just to have a copy of Windows 11 installed to mess with and a Linux distro or two.  Then find 5 or 6 plugins/packages that can be installed from TrueNAS, etc...  Sort of load up things like will typically happen over time and don't resist going a bit overboard with setting up more of these then you think you'll need.  That will help you concerning organization and see if it leads to any type of performance issues that doing differently would help. A simulation if you will of a more loaded down system.

Get  Emby installed if not already with a small test library and get 2 or 3 playbacks going with forced transcoding.  Does the system handle this ok having the transcode folder on the storage pool or should it be on it's own working drive that might be a small SSD?  These are the types of things you just need to try.

 

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bacardi8

yes I will try out different scenarios to see how it all reacts.

What do you mean in your first line by " you likely want the host itself on SSD "....what host are we talking about here...??

The OS runs on a 250GB NVME.

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  • 4 weeks later...
bacardi8

Hi again, and Happy New Year,

It's been a while since I was active here, so here an update.

I did a lot of tests to find out what system would fit my needs, and at the same time I'm also curious to check out some new and to me unknown stuff.

Cayars was suggesting me a lot of things and how I could check it out, so that's what I did.

I checked out OMV 5, OMV 6, 3 different Linux Distro's and Truenas Scale.

When I say checking out, then it means that all these was installed on my server (not only as VM) and was running for a while where I tried out the different scenarios that

would fit my needs, and also the ease of use, performance, how they run the different apps, and so on.

I ended up with Truenas Scale and currently have this as my new system. Scale and Linux is still new to me, so I use help around in different forums,

but I'm very exited so far how this is running. (after 3-4 times re-install, after 20-30 times of creating pools and install/re-install of apps, etc..😁😁),

but that how it is for a newbie like me, but I also learned a lot along the way I must say.

Cayars, I have a Emby question by the way,

I'm still running Emby server with my premiere key on my Synology NAS, which is fine so far.

Now I also installed Emby on Scale, by using the email from my premiere account, and all is good, except that it seams that I don't have an premiere key on my new server.

Is that normal or is it me that doing something wrong...??

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Happy2Play
1 hour ago, bacardi8 said:

I'm still running Emby server with my premiere key on my Synology NAS, which is fine so far.

Now I also installed Emby on Scale, by using the email from my premiere account, and all is good, except that it seams that I don't have an premiere key on my new server.

Is that normal or is it me that doing something wrong...??

Did you enter your premiere key on Scale Emby servers? If key is not activating on Scale server, we will probably need to see the server log.

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bacardi8

Hi Happy2Play,

No I did not enter anything yet.

I just installed Emby on Scale and during the Emby setup from the web there is the possibility to add your username or email address from your existing Emby account, and this I did.

Do I need a new key for my new server...??

Edited by bacardi8
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Happy2Play
Just now, bacardi8 said:

Hi Happy2Play,

No I did not enter anything yet.

I just installed Emby on Scale and during the Emby setup from the web there is the possibility to add your username or email address from your existing Emby account.

Yes you can add Connect user inform to any local user on that server.

But you can add your premiere key to multiple systems.

Can I use my Emby Premiere Key on More than One Server : Emby

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bacardi8

Ah okay,

but how to add my premiere key to my new system then...??

another question,

My Emby premiere key is currently on my Synology NAS, soon a friend will take over this Synology NAS, and buy his own Emby premiere key for that.

Would it make sense to let my current premiere key stay on the Synology, then later change this key to the new owner, and I buy a new premiere key for my new server...???

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Happy2Play
43 minutes ago, bacardi8 said:

Ah okay,

but how to add my premiere key to my new system then...??

another question,

My Emby premiere key is currently on my Synology NAS, soon a friend will take over this Synology NAS, and buy his own Emby premiere key for that.

Would it make sense to let my current premiere key stay on the Synology, then later change this key to the new owner, and I buy a new premiere key for my new server...???

You add the key via Settings-Emby Premiere.

If you are selling the NAS I would remove the key from the system and have your friend apply their key.

Remember keys are assigned to an email address so it might be hard for you to get another key.

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You would have them setup using different IPs or different ports.  If they were both available remotely you would need dual sets of port forwarding.
Once both are running properly you would use the Switch Server feature in any app (settings or person icon).

Hopefully that helps,
Carlo

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  • 2 weeks later...
bacardi8

Hi cayars,

Sorry for the late answer, yes different ports did the trick.

All runs great on both, easy to switch between them.

Thanks

  • Thanks 1
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3 hours ago, bacardi8 said:

Hi cayars,

Sorry for the late answer, yes different ports did the trick.

All runs great on both, easy to switch between them.

Thanks

Thanks for the feedback.

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On 2/3/2022 at 7:25 PM, bacardi8 said:

Hi cayars,

Sorry for the late answer, yes different ports did the trick.

All runs great on both, easy to switch between them.

Thanks

Glad that did the trick for you.  Let us know if you have any other issues so we can help you with them.

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