TrueNAS and Other Custom NAS Builds

[Sn0wMan]

Do you have a 3D printer? I’ve been eyeing some recent new models, including one by Creality. But I’m not sure what useful things I would print with it…

No, I do not have it. Do not know what I need to print....

 

[CaseySJ]

... I'm having a contractor install a full line of Ubiquity Unifi networking equipment in the house, with 10GbE network drops installed in several places, both upstairs and downstairs.

I do not want to perform backups to NAS on slow networks...

The network upgrade has begun. I'll also have OM4 LC-LC fiber cables routed to a handful of locations.

 

[gandem]

The network upgrade has begun. I'll also have OM4 LC-LC fiber cables routed to a handful of locations.

Jelly beans!

 

[gandem]

An update on my build...

I've been up and running for a little over a week now with the latest TrueNAS Scale. After hackintoshing, installation was a breeze! The configuration is much more of a trial and error process, which for the most part is what I expected. I experienced my first hardware failure already- 1 of the Exos began registering 100's of read/write errors after day 3. Of course, I always buy an extra drive so I was able to go through the process of replacing my first spinner! I don't have any meaningful data on the NAS yet, just enough to test configurations so that took away any real pressure. I'm running an RZ2 VDEV and the replace process was very easy. New Egg already accepted my request so I will be receiving a new drive next week. The SMB for Time Machine seems to be completely working, several guides out there. (Just limited testing) The more complicated configuration is for the media server. I've successfully installed and configured Photoprism. The tricky part is having an SMB share for the library. It seems to be working after diving into many guides on how to setup custom host paths. I'm working on a Plex installation now just to experiment with followed by JellyFin. I will eventually start over and erase everything once I have settled on a configuration.

@CaseySJ,
It looks like JellyFin requires the use of an NFS share when using a custom path. Are there any down sides to that when trying to share with MacOS clients to load content? I guess the design is to import new content through the web portal, not via share.

EDIT- Getting good speed from my Z690 ProArt on 10GB port- 8 spinning disks in RZ2.
Averaging approx. 950/1048

 

[CaseySJ]

@gandem

Jellyfin does indeed require NFS shares, which are perfectly okay to create on each media dataset. In my system, all media datasets are nested within a parent dataset. The parent is exported as an SMB share so that allows me to mount the parent via standard SMB in order to upload files.

I was getting S.M.A.R.T. read/write errors on one of my drives. After searching the TrueNAS forum, someone suggested rebooting. That cleared the error and it hasn't happened for several days. Will keep an eye on it though.

 

[gandem]

@gandem

I was getting S.M.A.R.T. read/write errors on one of my drives. After searching the TrueNAS forum, someone suggested rebooting. That cleared the error and it hasn't happened for several days. Will keep an eye on it though.

For me, the errors did not clear after reboots, they kept building, none on the others.

Did not think of a parent SMB, will give that a try when I play around with JellyFin.

 

[ramazarusx]

I was getting S.M.A.R.T. read/write errors on one of my drives. After searching the TrueNAS forum, someone suggested rebooting. That cleared the error and it hasn't happened for several days. Will keep an eye on it though.

If it happens again just replace the drive(warrantee if you can). I've wasted 6hr once looking for the source error in the TrueNAS it ended up being something off in the drives firmware. Cheaper to replace it.

 

[CaseySJ]

If it happens again just replace the drive(warrantee if you can). I've wasted 6hr once looking for the source error in the TrueNAS it ended up being something off in the drives firmware. Cheaper to replace it.

The drives have a 2-year warranty so I’ll take your advice and replace the suspect drive if the problem occurs again.

 

[gandem]

@CaseySJ
Didn't you mention you were able to use GPU hardware acceleration with JellyFin?
Just curious, are you using just the built-in iGPU or did you add in a dGPU as well?
I'm wondering how you setup things up on the TrueNAS side, or was it just in the App configuration?

 

[CaseySJ]

@CaseySJ
Didn't you mention you were able to use GPU hardware acceleration with JellyFin?

I temporarily installed an Nvidia GT1030 with the goal of using GPU passthrough in a Windows VM hosted within TrueNAS. That experiment failed.

I then installed Proxmox on a separate SSD and here I was able to configure GPU pass-through for a Windows 11 VM.

Just curious, are you using just the built-in iGPU or did you add in a dGPU as well?

I've since removed the Nvidia GPU to save power. I'm relying on the Intel iGPU (QuickSync) for transcoding in Jellyfin, which works very well.

I'm wondering how you setup things up on the TrueNAS side, or was it just in the App configuration?

As you can see in my previous screenshot, I first created separate ZFS datasets for each type of media. These datasets were exported as NFS shares.

All of the remaining configuration for Jellyfin was done within the Jellyfin app itself.