multiple FreeNAS boxes on a network

[pirateghost]

I thought Freenas was supposed to be a mature product, why would it lose the array?

It's not that FreeNAS will lose your array. It's the fact that putting large disks in a raidz1 is a risk. When the system has to resilver, you run the risk of losing a second drive during this long intensive resilver process. Losing a second drive while in a raidz1 configuration will lose all data on the pool.

This is less about capabilities of FreeNAS and more about the failure rates of hard drives

 

[Stux]

It's not that FreeNAS will lose your array. It's the fact that putting large disks in a raidz1 is a risk. When the system has to resilver, you run the risk of losing a second drive during this long intensive resilver process. Losing a second drive while in a raidz1 configuration will lose all data on the pool.

This is less about capabilities of FreeNAS and more about the failure rates of hard drives

And it's not a theoretical risk, it's probable that you will at least lose some data during an 18Tb rebuild with no redundancy. If not a total data loss due to 100% failure of another disk.

Raidz2, lowers the risk from say, 35% to 1%

 

[joeschmuck]

The OP asked for options and I provided them. RaidZ1 is not optimal but provided they know the risks and in this case the OP is really using FreeNAS as a media server for BluRay copies and has the original media so a loss of the pool doesn't mean that there is data loss, more really just a royal pain to do a full recovery. My favorite recommendation was to loose the full BluRay copy and use an MP4 Main Movie rip which would save a lot of space, then the OP doesn't even have to change the pool. But all we can to is lay out the options and hope they choose wisely. Right now the OP is running mirrors I believe.

 

[Stux]

The OP asked for options and I provided them. RaidZ1 is not optimal but provided they know the risks and in this case the OP is really using FreeNAS as a media server for BluRay copies and has the original media so a loss of the pool doesn't mean that there is data loss, more really just a royal pain to do a full recovery.

Which is why I wanted to let the OP know the level of risk he was taking.

If the high probability of losing the pool is actually a problem, then it's perhaps too much risk, considering the likelihood

Personally, if I'd put the time into ripping my bluray collection, my time would be worth more than a 6Tb disk.

And that's if the only data is totally replaceable bluray rips.

 

[JoeB]

Ofcourse guys you're right, I don't want to have the hassle to re-ripping 1200 dvd/bluerays as it takes weeks to do that, other info on the box is duplicated to the cloud already, but i need to change this to mirror to an old (mirror 2x 1T) readynas duo i have in the attic that's currently unused.

So, I'm fitting a 6th drive. I've just upgraded the RAM to 16G (2x 8G) and the GUI seems alot faster now, maybe its just me? Looking at the memory report graph, for the last month its always used the full 12G, now i've upgraded, its only using 2G (!?) maybe because of the recent restart of the box?

I've also bought another drive to replace the failed drive in the box (ada0) so i'll replace that and resilver overnight, then send the failed drive back to WD for repair.
When it comes back, i'll fit it as 6 drives, and begin the 'process'.

I'm currently testing how to backup plex, CP, Sabnzbd and Sickrage. I've successfully managed to restore plex to a new install in a different jail, so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Crashplan costs $60 a year, a new drive costs $120, so if it were you, would you have a crashplan account and Raid Z1, or just Z2 without crashplan?

 

[Mirfster]

Looking at the memory report graph, for the last month its always used the full 12G, now i've upgraded, its only using 2G (!?) maybe because of the recent restart of the box?

Give it time, FreeNAS will use pretty much all available memory. Nothing wrong with that at all since idle RAM is wasted RAM.

Crashplan costs $60 a year, a new drive costs $120, so if it were you, would you have a crashplan account and Raid Z1, or just Z2 without crashplan?

I am paranoid about where my data is kept so RaidZ2 IMHO. More than likely just me and others would disagree, but to each their own.

 

[pirateghost]

Ofcourse guys you're right, I don't want to have the hassle to re-ripping 1200 dvd/bluerays as it takes weeks to do that, other info on the box is duplicated to the cloud already, but i need to change this to mirror to an old (mirror 2x 1T) readynas duo i have in the attic that's currently unused.

So, I'm fitting a 6th drive. I've just upgraded the RAM to 16G (2x 8G) and the GUI seems alot faster now, maybe its just me? Looking at the memory report graph, for the last month its always used the full 12G, now i've upgraded, its only using 2G (!?) maybe because of the recent restart of the box?

I've also bought another drive to replace the failed drive in the box (ada0) so i'll replace that and resilver overnight, then send the failed drive back to WD for repair.
When it comes back, i'll fit it as 6 drives, and begin the 'process'.

I'm currently testing how to backup plex, CP, Sabnzbd and Sickrage. I've successfully managed to restore plex to a new install in a different jail, so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Crashplan costs $60 a year, a new drive costs $120, so if it were you, would you have a crashplan account and Raid Z1, or just Z2 without crashplan?

Raidz2 and crashplan

 

[joeschmuck]

Okay, I've never used crashplan but I checked out the website and it states "unlimited storage". Is that true? So I could have crashplan on my FreeNAS server and backup all of it's contents over the internet no matter how large my server was? Maybe I need to look into this more.

 

[danb35]

I'm using about 4 TB there, and they aren't complaining.

 

[pirateghost]

Okay, I've never used crashplan but I checked out the website and it states "unlimited storage". Is that true? So I could have crashplan on my FreeNAS server and backup all of it's contents over the internet no matter how large my server was? Maybe I need to look into this more.

Yes. It's unlimited for $60/year for one computer, which could be your FreeNAS

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes. It's unlimited for $60/year for one computer, which could be your FreeNAS

I'm using about 4 TB there, and they aren't complaining.

Hot Diggity!

 

[Stux]

There's a bug big thread where people are discussing all the difficulty they're having keeping crash plan functional on their freenas

Edit: fix an appropriate typo!

 

[danb35]

Yes, many of us have given up on the FreeNAS plugin and are running it in a VM instead. Usually under Linux, but there might be some running it under Windows as well.

 

[joeschmuck]

Still worth investigating.

 

[danb35]

Indeed, particularly since you're on ESXi. Set up a small Ubuntu VM (I'd give it at least 4 GB RAM, though) and install CrashPlan on it. Export the desired shares on your FreeNAS server via NFS. Mount them on the VM. And away you go. I'd use one of the Ubuntu LTS Server flavors, or you could use CentOS instead--in either case you'd end up with a stable distro that will be supported for quite a while.

 

[diedrichg]

@JoeB if you do decide to rebuild your FN machine, be sure to make a backup of your config file! http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/system.html#general ...see the paragraph Save Config Also, if you don't already have your boot drive set as mirrored SSDs or SATADOMs you may want to consider switching to such a configuration.

 

[JoeB]

Indeed, particularly since you're on ESXi. Set up a small Ubuntu VM (I'd give it at least 4 GB RAM, though) and install CrashPlan on it. Export the desired shares on your FreeNAS server via NFS. Mount them on the VM. And away you go. I'd use one of the Ubuntu LTS Server flavors, or you could use CentOS instead--in either case you'd end up with a stable distro that will be supported for quite a while.

Is there a guide somewhere for this? I have installed Debian+lxde, given it 8G HDD and 4G RAM, then installed VBoxGuestAdditions. I can VNC into the desktop, where i downloaded Crashplan and installed it. It starts up and I can log into it, but I cannot figure out how to mount the files on the Freenas box into the VM environment using shares?

 

[gpsguy]

His current server won't suport your suggested configuration. I'd go a matched pair of quality mirrored flash drives. He's already planning to shoehorn another hard disk into a box that HP says will hold 4 HDD's.

Also, if you don't already have your boot drive set as mirrored SSDs or SATADOMs you may want to consider switching to such a configuration.

 

[danb35]

but I cannot figure out how to mount the files on the Freenas box into the VM environment using shares?

What's the problem with this? On the FreeNAS side, share whatever directories you want to back up in whatever way seems best to you, though NFS is generally easiest to mount and use under *nix OSs. On the VM side, mount those shares however you'd mount an NFS share under Debian. That isn't at all a FreeNAS question, but no doubt there's Debian documentation available on the subject.

 

[JoeB]

Right then, everything has finally copied off freenas to a readynas. So its time to add the new HDDs and recreate the pool, this time as Z2 ;-)

I have backup up the /var/db/<appname> in their jails, as it doesn't seem possible to copy out and back an entire jail.

My question is, does downloading the freenas via 'System->general->Save Config' in the GUI save the jail storage configurations? Or do i need to take a photo of the jails->storage tab to recreate this later?