Is there any guides or info on how to set up a multi node system?

[Poppa]

Again, lots of software is sold this way

I can't think of any consumer subscription software that is priced based on how many things a person has. Have any example?

Really? Seems sensible from a certain point of view.... We already pay for roads in a lot of areas with taxes on gasoline, which used to scale pretty well as it translated fairly well to miles driven, but now with electric vehicles, that's a bit of a problem, which is why governments have been looking for ways to fund roads through something other than a gas tax. You can think it "asinine", but the world is changing, and the construction workers who build roads need to be paid.... While I am little-l libertarian, I see huge value to our society in having modern infrastructure systems. Transportation, water, energy, communications, etc.

I can tell you're not really libertarian at all. According to insurance companies, the average American drives about 15,000 miles a year. If we assume just for math sake that the average federal, state and local gas tax is .75 per gallon of gas and you drive a vehicle that gets and average of 30 MPG, the total cost to you a year in gas taxes is $375. If the government transitions to a per mile bases and keeps the rates the same (which they would because democrats), that would cost the average American $11,250 a year.

I agree that we need a more modern infrastructure but that isn't going to happen from mandates and increased taxation imposed by a generally incompetent government. I work in construction in a very blue state with high taxes that is wasting $50 billion on a lightrail while Texas, a red state with low taxes is planning America's first high speed rail project. As someone in construction, I can tell you that there is a huge amount of wasteful "pork" spending on government funded projects and as for the Texas wind turbines, Texas has never experienced a storm like that in modern history which is why they weren't prepared.

You paid two and a half bucks per game? For what games?

Yes. I never buy games when they are new. I always wait until all the DLC and season passes are done and then pick up the complete version several years later in either the winter or summer sale. They also usually offer franchise/developer/publisher bundles during these sales. I never even paid for an OS since every computer I ever bought came with Windows and I just kept reusing the disc or key that come with it.

I understand IXS position but from a non enterprise/business standpoint, paying $350+ plus a year for a single software subscription is completely BONKERS!!! Like I said to ornias, there are other hobbyists on r/DataHoarder or r/homelab who have about as many drives or more than me and I strongly believe that IXS needs to make the free limit at least 250 or charge a low non-commercial flat rate if they want to be reasonable.

 

[amiskell]

I can't think of any consumer subscription software that is priced based on how many things a person has. Have any example?

TeamViewer (pricing based on number or users and sessions) is one. There's also lots of software that you pay yearly for that only permits use on a single computer or a set number of computers and you have to pay extra for additional computers. The concept is no different.

I understand IXS position but from a non enterprise/business standpoint, paying $350+ plus a year for a single software subscription is completely BONKERS!!! Like I said to ornias, there are other hobbyists on r/DataHoarder or r/homelab who have about as many drives or more than me and I strongly believe that IXS needs to make the free limit at least 250 or charge a low non-commercial flat rate if they want to be reasonable.

Why should they? Because you demand something for free or low cost because you feel you "need" it? The community is lucky that iX even allows free use of FreeNAS/TrueNAS with all the features and work that goes into it that iX pays real money for (although there are some vested reasons for that which provide value to the company).

 

[Ericloewe]

"Enterprise" drive counts would easily be in the thousands

Hard disagree. A thousand drives barely fit in a single rack, with tons of caveats, and the setup required for that is way beyond anything less than "enterprise". Heavy-duty racks, crazy-loud servers, serious cooling, etc. Therefore, you often need multiple racks for a thousand disks. I'm going to spitball three or four racks with any degree of sanity, given that you generally want to do things with the data.

There are other people besides me on r/DataHoarder or r/homelab who have about as many as or more drives than me.

So what? They too can pay if they think it's a good deal or figure out something else if they think it's a rip-off.

I can't think of any consumer subscription software that is priced based on how many things a person has. Have any example?

Consumer Office 365, with packages for one and for six users. Enterprise is, of course, much more complicated. Antivirus software.

If the government transitions to a per mile bases and keeps the rates the same (which they would because democrats), that would cost the average American $11,250 a year.

That's the same as saying "if they raise taxes, then they will effectively be raising taxes".

 

[ornias]

any business that requires lots of reliable data storage is going to have way more than what I have

Bussinesses shouldn't rely on freebees. Period.

I understand that most people don't have servers in their homes or more than a few drives in their PC but.

177(!) drives is not just a "server" or "a couple of servers". This is WELL byond that.

There are other people besides me on r/DataHoarder or r/homelab who have about as many as or more drives than me.

So, you can still use them. you can still use truenas AND you can still create a cluster using the CLI.
The ONLY thing you are missing is a fancy GUI for the clustering. Really? Dude....

 

[ornias]

I can't think of any consumer subscription software that is priced based on how many things a person has. Have any example?

TrueNAS and definately TrueCommand isn't consumer software, it's enterprise or SMB software.

I can tell you're not really libertarian at all. According to insurance companies, the average American drives about 15,000 miles a year. If we assume just for math sake that the average federal, state and local gas tax is .75 per gallon of gas and you drive a vehicle that gets and average of 30 MPG, the total cost to you a year in gas taxes is $375. If the government transitions to a per mile bases and keeps the rates the same (which they would because democrats), that would cost the average American $11,250 a year.

I agree that we need a more modern infrastructure but that isn't going to happen from mandates and increased taxation imposed by a generally incompetent government. I work in construction in a very blue state with high taxes that is wasting $50 billion on a lightrail while Texas, a red state with low taxes is planning America's first high speed rail project. As someone in construction, I can tell you that there is a huge amount of wasteful "pork" spending on government funded projects and as for the Texas wind turbines, Texas has never experienced a storm like that in modern history which is why they weren't prepared.
Yes. I never buy games when they are new. I always wait until all the DLC and season passes are done and then pick up the complete version several years later in either the winter or summer sale. They also usually offer franchise/developer/publisher bundles during these sales. I never even paid for an OS since every computer I ever bought came with Windows and I just kept reusing the disc or key that come with it.

#Offtopic
# irrelevant

I understand IXS position but from a non enterprise/business standpoint, paying $350+ plus a year for a single software subscription is completely BONKERS!!! Like I said to ornias, there are other hobbyists on r/DataHoarder or r/homelab who have about as many drives or more than me and I strongly believe that IXS needs to make the free limit at least 250 or charge a low non-commercial flat rate if they want to be reasonable.

Dude... really... You have more disks than the average medium size company.
You can even cluster your servers and use TrueNAS... Why do you want to be a choosing begar just for a stupid GUI?!

 

[jgreco]

"Enterprise" drive counts would easily be in the thousands. I understand that most people don't have servers in their homes or more than a few drives in their PC but any business that requires lots of reliable data storage is going to have way more than what I have. There are other people besides me on r/DataHoarder or r/homelab who have about as many as or more drives than me. IXS needs to make the free limit at least 250 if they want to be reasonable.

I think it is fair and equitable to say that iXsystems sells a lot of enterprise storage systems, as do companies like EMC, EqualLogic, NetApp, etc., and that NAS/SAN arrays with drive counts of 24 (not 2400) are quite common. Entry level, perhaps, but still enterprise.

You are free to define "enterprise" drive counts with whatever unrealistic metric you wish, so that you can take offense at iX selling their software, but at the end of the day this just looks like misplaced entitlement.

I can't think of any consumer subscription software that is priced based on how many things a person has. Have any example?

TrueNAS is not consumer subscription software.

I can tell you're not really libertarian at all. According to insurance companies, the average American drives about 15,000 miles a year. If we assume just for math sake that the average federal, state and local gas tax is .75 per gallon of gas and you drive a vehicle that gets and average of 30 MPG, the total cost to you a year in gas taxes is $375. If the government transitions to a per mile bases and keeps the rates the same (which they would because democrats), that would cost the average American $11,250 a year.

Well, I am actually quite libertarian, enough to have helped bring the Internet to the world, along with USENET. I'm a known quantity in the community. But I'm also pragmatic.

I agree that we need a more modern infrastructure but that isn't going to happen from mandates and increased taxation imposed by a generally incompetent government. I work in construction in a very blue state with high taxes that is wasting $50 billion on a lightrail while Texas, a red state with low taxes is planning America's first high speed rail project. As someone in construction, I can tell you that there is a huge amount of wasteful "pork" spending on government funded projects and as for the Texas wind turbines, Texas has never experienced a storm like that in modern history which is why they weren't prepared.

Is this just something where you're choosing to define "in modern history" conveniently to avoid the 2011 or 1989 disasters in Texas? As someone in engineering, I like to look at things that have happened in the past or that might happen in the future.

In any case, you seem to be deliberately trolling, so this thread should probably end here.

 

[ornias]

Consumer Office 365, with packages for one and for six users. Enterprise is, of course, much more complicated. Antivirus software.

In short:
Time limited, deployment (aka: hardware) limited licenses are slowly becoming the norm.

Windows, Adobe, AntiVirus, Remove management tools etcetcetcetc.

 

[ornias]

I think it is fair and equitable to say that iXsystems sells a lot of enterprise storage systems, as do companies like EMC, EqualLogic, NetApp, etc., and that NAS/SAN arrays with drive counts of 24 (not 2400) are quite common. Entry level, perhaps, but still enterprise.

Yeah, thats why I would personally prefer a limit of 75 drives for the free tier instead of 24. That just adds up to a redunant cluster of 3 basic industry standard 24 bay 4U cases filled with drives.

But still I completely agree that iX is perfectly free in asking some money for their stupid GUI.
(I personally am not a big fan of it anyway, I prefer the way proxmox does clustering tbh)

In any case, you seem to be deliberately trolling, so this thread should probably end here.

Agreed, trolling or choosing begar-ing.
That being said: I think there is a place to discuss the height of the drive limit. But definately not this way.

 

[danb35]

You know, every now and then I wonder why I put a user on my ignore list. But it usually doesn't take me long to remember.

 

[ornias]

You know, every now and then I wonder why I put a user on my ignore list. But it usually doesn't take me long to remember.

Thanks for the reminder... I totally forgot it existed :(

 

[HoneyBadger]

$2/drive/yr is a ludicrously cheap price for vendor support, and the functionality still being exposed via CLI kind of makes this a moot point. What are we arguing about here?

 

[ornias]

$2/drive/yr is a ludicrously cheap price for vendor support, and the functionality still being exposed via CLI kind of makes this a moot point. What are we arguing about here?

We are arguing about this, basically:

Urban Dictionary: choosing beggar

A typical choosing beggar wants things that are decently expensive, and good quality, for astonishingly low prices. The "choosing beggar" title, originated from Reddit, under a subreddit called r/choosingbeggars. When choosing beggars don't get their ways, they often start cussing and...

www.urbandictionary.com

 

[Poppa]

TeamViewer (pricing based on number or users and sessions) is one. There's also lots of software that you pay yearly for that only permits use on a single computer or a set number of computers

Hey amiskell, nice strawman there. Care to actually re-read my question and provide a valid answer?

Why should they? Because you demand something for free or low cost because you feel you "need" it?

I don't "need" it but would happily pay for TrueNAS with more features if the pricing scheme wasn't so got damn ridiculous and greedy and I haven't demanded anything. FACT, $350+ a year for a software subscription based on how many things a person has is excessive for a home user. You seem to have this attitude that us lowly peasants should be grateful that IX continues to provide this open source software that was originally free for free. Never mind the fact that one of the original developers of FreeNAS went to go start Open Media Vault and that other alternatives would spring up if """Free"""NAS were no longer "free" which would create competition and cut down on FreeNAS/TrueNAS users which would also impact IXS's business. It's about the value proposition and the FACT is it just isn't there. IX want's to essentially charge just for the extra feature of clustering but wants to base that price on how many of something someone has in their possession. I am interested in this "feature" because before my current setup, I was looking into setting up a Ceph cluster but I wanted my file system to use ZFS and Ceph wasn't as easy to setup as FreeNAS especially for those like me that hate and has no patience for CLI's. Now after several years later, clustering has finally come to FreeNAS but you want people like me to pay an ever increasing amount (because I am likely to buy enough drives to fill my remaining servers) just for this one feature, a feature that could be provided by alternatives if I really cared enough which I don't. I have no problem sticking with my current setup and instead of offering TrueCommand at a reasonable rate and making some money from people like me, IX gets NOTHING. IXS can earn a volume profit from many or a niche profit from a few.

 

[Poppa]

vendor support, and the functionality still being exposed via CLI

I don't need or want vendor support just this one extra software feature and I absolutely loathe CLI's. I could not use FreeNAS or Linux without a graphical interface.

So not "moot".

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hey amiskell, nice strawman there. Care to actually re-read my question and provide a valid answer?

Backblaze. Personal backup product has an "unlimited capacity" but is licensed on a "per computer" basis.

 

[amiskell]

Backblaze. Personal backup product has an "unlimited capacity" but is licensed on a "per computer" basis.

He doesn't care, any answer you give will be invalid in some way to him.

He keeps repeating that iX is charging for the clustering feature, which they are not, you can use the CLI to create a cluster without TrueCommand. TrueCommand is just a GUI that uses the available APIs to create a cluster among a plethora of other things (which is one of TrueCommands features, not the whole point of TrueCommand). He simply doesn't get it and doesn't understand, just raging about something iX is entitled to charge how they see fit.

The mods edited one of my previous posts for stating it outright but @jgreco is right, it's entitlement, pure and simple. I deal with it all the time in my line of business (I work in software as well, not hard to find based on my username).

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Complaining about excessive pricing for a home user while running 177 disk drives. The very first person I block. Congrats.

 

[danb35]

I totally forgot it existed :(

The problem is that my morbid curiosity makes it much less useful than it otherwise would be.

 

[derWalter]

You all should be thankful for Poppa to pop up and still trying to make his stance without any support against the whole forum. Including mods and administrators (I feel bad for that kind of publicity you get from a professional perspective for that...)

He brings up valid points of critique. Instead of taking it and trying to solve the problems, you just nuke the hell out of him. you even attended some sheep following the leaders in this unfair battle... group dynamics are hard to handle, he :P??

but, let talk facts:

1. the pricing policies from lifetime licenses to software-as-a-service models is bloodsucking to me. as a business, yes, as long as yor cashflow works well, its okay, but for a private person its not a perfect good model. what would be a productive, better or more fair way? could it be more granular? or even dynamic?
2. the code base once was totally free, well, as it seems to me, he is just plain right on that point. I can understand that people take it with a grain of salt, that free software gets "used to lure people in", or at least it might feel so to some people... its nice that you turned it into a well running business and that a bunch of people can live of it, but this burden of history is yours, so just take it, as you already live it :P its not bad, especially not in the US to do such opportunistic things. and to be fair, you still offer a lot for free and I dont see him complaining a lot about this, but its understandable, valid and also already gone with the wind of time...
3. charging by drive count is somehow a strange criteria. a drive can have from a few (hundred) gb up to 18?tb so that doesnt tell anything about the machine one is operating. I remember charging per CPU, than per CPU CORE, but all that doesnt reflect on the value of a system. what would be a better way? (benchmarking the hardware? hardware price list?) lets just have some visions of a better system there
4. he gives you a lot of respect and credits for your work in many different ways and I dont see any official representative here treading him equally respectful
5. its a business opportunity here, to make points and show more openness, open your heart for the weak and talk about it, and with "dragon dreaming" in mind, the naysayers are your biggest asset if you know how to use their information correctly. if you take them into your design process and work till they are satisfied, you will have a way better and more competitive product. (thats why I wrote my first sentence :) )

I hope for all parties to learn a lot from this conversation and that everyone benefits for the greater good we all rely on :)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

The pricing policies from lifetime licenses to software-as-a-service models is bloodsucking to me.

Partly agree, but only partly. That has been the dominant model in the B2B world for quite some time and it's just how it is. We fork out 30k per year for Atlassian products. OTOH the productivity of our teams has soared since we replaced a zoo of Redmine, Mediawiki and tons of other not-quite-integrated stuff with JIRA and Confluence. Privately I still refuse to invest in any mobile "app" that is not buy once but a subscription model.

the code base once was totally free, well, as it seems to me, he is just plain right on that point. I can understand that people take it with a grain of salt, that free software gets "used to lure people in", or at least it might feel so to some people... its nice that you turned it into a well running business and that a bunch of people can live of it, but this burden of history is yours, so just take it, as you already live it :P its not bad, especially not in the US to do such opportunistic things. and to be fair, you still offer a lot for free and I dont see him complaining a lot about this, but its understandable, valid and also already gone with the wind of time...

And that's why the guy is being roasted. The code base is still totally free. 100%.

TrueCommand is an additional Enterprise Management product. And there even is a free tier! For 50 disks! Who in his sane mind thinks 50 disk drives is a common hobbyist setup?
Of all people I know who use Free/TrueNAS for their private network I am an absolute power user! I run three Supermicro servers that including memory and disks easily cost me 4k€ or some such. And still I count just 20 drives.
We even run the free tier at work, because our two large TrueNAS based hypervisor systems that are only used for VMs have 6 NVME drives each. With a maximum capacity of 10 drives per system.

I run TrueCommand because I am curious how the product develops. If we get anywhere near a "vSphere" management capability, I'd happily pay a couple of hundred per year for that should I ever deploy more systems and cross the 50 disk limit. See our Atlassian bill above. Lookup VMware vSphere pricing. And no, there is absolutely *no* hobbyist free tier for vSphere apart from the isolated hypervisor (ESXi). If you want the management console, VM migration and stuff, the "developer network" membership is 200 per year (!) if I remember correctly. Definityle that order of magnitude.

Kind regards,
Patrick