ramblings about freenas

[beeph]

Googles list of reasons for data loss:

1. hard drive failure
2. RAM failure
..
..
12. employee error
..
30. cyberattacks
31. international espionage

FreeNas list:
1. couldnt figure out how ZFS worked because of some weird command line thing oops data gone
2. my awesome 20 gig zpool went down, time to resilver, oops resilvering melted my computer, data gone
3. I only need 4 gigs of RAM!

Normal people list:

1. spilled a coke on our computer
2. cat got into the computer
3. got drunk and knocked over the computer
..
..
12. girlfriend erased your drive looking for evidence of porn and dating sites by mistake
..
30.. hard drive failure
31.. RAM failure


I dont think i have a single friend that has a file over 5 years old.. Data loss is pretty much just 100% for the normal population.

 

[Mlovelace]

I dont think i have a single friend that has a file over 5 years old..

I think your group of friends is the exception. Most people have switched to digital photography, music and media more than 5 years ago, and would consider the data loss a big deal.

 

[Mirfster]

I dont think i have a single friend that has a file over 5 years old..

Hmm, I don't agree with this. I guess it is because I am an "old man" and have kids that are 20, 12 and 11. So there in itself should at least indicate how old pictures/movies I have stored are...

Heck I have copies of pretty much all my work/code/notes/software and I have be in the IT Industry over 25 years.

Guess perhaps once your friends get more miles under their belts they may be seeing things differently. :p

 

[Ericloewe]

I dont think i have a single friend that has a file over 5 years old.. Data loss is pretty much just 100% for the normal population.

A bit of an exaggeration, but true to an extent...

Whenever I talk with someone and the conversation somehow drifts towards FreeNAS, the first question 95% of the time is "Why would you want a server?", which, after my explanation, is then followed by "Why don't you use just a hard drive?".
Most people just do not understand that all their precious stuff (because they do have precious files) can be wiped out by their poor practices.

 

[danb35]

1. couldnt figure out how ZFS worked because of some weird command line thing oops data gone

If you're doing "weird command line things" with your pool under FreeNAS, you're already doing it wrong (unless you have an intimate understanding of ZFS and FreeBSD). It'd be much more accurate to say "didn't bother to try to figure out ZFS, despite the very thorough manual, and the resources linked from the manual, and blew through multiple warnings in the GUI."

2. my awesome 20 gig zpool went down, time to resilver, oops resilvering melted my computer, data gone

I have no idea what you mean by "resilvering melted my computer," but if resilvering puts any significant load on the CPU, your computer is completely inadequate for FreeNAS.

 

[beeph]

danb35 you aren't rockin my amd phenom without AES-NI instructions!!
it was worse when i had to do GELI encryption by command line in the pre-Snowden 8.0 era when the whole 'if you have nothing to hide' mentality reigned supreme

 

[danb35]

you aren't rockin my amd phenom without AES-NI instructions!!

No, I'm not. My hardware is suitable (OK, it's gross overkill) for my use case.

 

[cyberjock]

I have pictures and data going back to when I was in high school (mid-90s). Your friends clearly shouldn't work in IT (or at least shouldn't be trusted with big business-alternating decisions in IT) if they haven't been able to keep their data for 5 solid years. That's a sign of failure.

We've laughed and joked at the youtuber that lost his data and made a video about it and twisted it to look like some kind of hero when he paid some company to recover his data. He was no such thing. His failures meant he is a failure from an IT standpoint.

In the real world of IT, when you're having to consider recovery options (or accept lost data), that means you should be expecting to polish your resume.

 

[HolyK]

Googles list of reasons for data loss:
..
30. cyberattacks
31. international espionage

I just read "Cyberjockattacks" and was like ...

 

[Mirfster]

I just read "Cyberjockattacks" and was like ...

Ahh yes those... they are usually just reserved for those lucky posters in these forums... :p

 

[Nick2253]

I just read "Cyberjockattacks" and was like ...

It's terrible, but I read the same thing :D

Data loss is pretty much just 100% for the normal population.

More seriously though, I think this is completely false. However, I do agree that this sentiment is fairly common, which is largely driven by the ubiquitous nature of cloud storage.

My guess is that most people your age don't actually have that much critical data stored locally (and only locally) on any device. Instead, thanks to the hard work of companies like Google, Apple, and Dropbox, data retention is as easy as logging in to your account. When your critical data is your school reports (probably on Google docs or similar) or your email (Gmail, Yahoo, Office 365, etc.), it's not difficult to be cavalier about data loss.

However, when that critical data starts to be multiple GBs of photographs and home movies, it's not so simple (or cheap) to leverage cloud storage. In addition, if a cloud provider you know and trust suddenly goes belly-up (along with your data), you'll suddenly have a different view about the reliability of third-parties as far as your data is concerned. And don't forget, you sometimes don't have an option as far as storing data: the IRS (or fill in your government's tax collector) has requirements for how long you must retain your documents to support your tax returns. Their auditor isn't going to care that you lost your documents because you "spilled coke on your computer."

Furthermore, the need for data privacy is real. Some may call it tin-foil craziness, but when you find yourself dealing with, for example, data theft when your Dropbox account gets hacked (which is where you store your tax documents) thanks to password reuse from a decade old MySpace account, a self-hosted, private data store sounds pretty good.

Anyway, the point of FreeNAS is to overcome the small and common reasons for data loss (hard drive failure, bit rot, application instability), but it does come with some complexity.

 

[cyberjock]

Thanks guys! I feel the love!