dzog
Cadet
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2017
- Messages
- 7
Hey FreeNAS folks!
I've had storage arrays for many years for personal use, generally always md linux software RAIDs.
My old RAID-6 (8x 1TB drives) is getting long in the tooth, so I'm planning to build a new array (16TB+ usable space) and am looking towards FreeNAS as it seems like the modern thing.
For hardware, I'm thinking 32 GB of ECC RAM, either a dual-core (i3-6100) or a quad-core (some Xeon) thing, and a nice PSU. I have a large server case that can hold lots of drives. Not sure yet on motherboard - I was thinking just a Gigabyte thing (I've always used those in the past), but now I'm looking at SuperMicro based on recommendations here.
This is a single-user array, mostly for backups / bulk media storage / art asset storage (mostly large files!). I likely want to do some plex transcoding and perhaps try to set up crashplan but that would be it for fancy stuff.
1. It seems that "11 drives per vdev" is a recommended max. Is that still accurate in 2017?
What would be better?
One VDEV, RAID-Z3, 11x 2TB disks
-or-
Two VDEVs, RAID-Z2, 6x 2TB disks each
-or-
One VDEV, RAID-Z3, 12x 2TB disks (this was my original plan)
2. In the past I've seen recommendations for using different model drives in arrays, reason being: drives from the same line are more likely to fail at the same time. Thoughts on this? I have a bunch of WD Caviar Black 2TBs and a bunch of Toshiba DT01ACA200 2TB drives (these have CCTL - Hitachi's TLER - enabled) and I'm thinking of mixing and matching.
3. Perhaps outside the scope of this subforum, but would the dual-core Skylake be sufficient for my usage (one user, but a fair number of disks)? Or do I really need to spring for a quad core here?
4. I've had really good luck in the past with ext3/4 on md RAID-6 (haven't lost data in 12 years of using RAID) and am experienced managing those systems. Is jumping to something like FreeNAS even worthwhile? The lack of recovery tools makes me nervous - though I have external backups of my most critical and irreplaceable stuff, an array loss would still be a big headache and timesink as I can't afford to truly back up everything. I realize this is a tradeoff I am making, but perhaps md+ext4 is better suited for me in this case?
Thanks!
I've had storage arrays for many years for personal use, generally always md linux software RAIDs.
My old RAID-6 (8x 1TB drives) is getting long in the tooth, so I'm planning to build a new array (16TB+ usable space) and am looking towards FreeNAS as it seems like the modern thing.
For hardware, I'm thinking 32 GB of ECC RAM, either a dual-core (i3-6100) or a quad-core (some Xeon) thing, and a nice PSU. I have a large server case that can hold lots of drives. Not sure yet on motherboard - I was thinking just a Gigabyte thing (I've always used those in the past), but now I'm looking at SuperMicro based on recommendations here.
This is a single-user array, mostly for backups / bulk media storage / art asset storage (mostly large files!). I likely want to do some plex transcoding and perhaps try to set up crashplan but that would be it for fancy stuff.
1. It seems that "11 drives per vdev" is a recommended max. Is that still accurate in 2017?
What would be better?
One VDEV, RAID-Z3, 11x 2TB disks
-or-
Two VDEVs, RAID-Z2, 6x 2TB disks each
-or-
One VDEV, RAID-Z3, 12x 2TB disks (this was my original plan)
2. In the past I've seen recommendations for using different model drives in arrays, reason being: drives from the same line are more likely to fail at the same time. Thoughts on this? I have a bunch of WD Caviar Black 2TBs and a bunch of Toshiba DT01ACA200 2TB drives (these have CCTL - Hitachi's TLER - enabled) and I'm thinking of mixing and matching.
3. Perhaps outside the scope of this subforum, but would the dual-core Skylake be sufficient for my usage (one user, but a fair number of disks)? Or do I really need to spring for a quad core here?
4. I've had really good luck in the past with ext3/4 on md RAID-6 (haven't lost data in 12 years of using RAID) and am experienced managing those systems. Is jumping to something like FreeNAS even worthwhile? The lack of recovery tools makes me nervous - though I have external backups of my most critical and irreplaceable stuff, an array loss would still be a big headache and timesink as I can't afford to truly back up everything. I realize this is a tradeoff I am making, but perhaps md+ext4 is better suited for me in this case?
Thanks!
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