Best config for performance with my gear

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Carl Swift

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Jul 21, 2015
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Hi all!

Here is what i have:
FreeNAS box
Dell T420
dual Xeon E5-2240 2.4ghx (6core)
192Gb ram
dell dual SD card with 2 16gb SDcards in it to load FreeNAS
8 drive bays int on a Perc H710 raid controller (6 x 3tb drives and [2 x 25ogb ssd's if needed])
Perc h810 connected to a MD1220 (DAS) with 24 x 600gb 10k sas (2.5in drives)
Intel 520 10 gb (2 ports)
I also have sitting around 3 x Fusion IO Duo 640gb cards if i can get one working in freenas if it can be used instead of the ssd's

I'm thinking of using iscsi or nfs.

Network
2 x Juniper ex3300 switches in a Virtual chassis. 8 x 10 gb ports (2 are used for the VC) so 6 avalable.

ESXi
2 x dell R420 E5-2240 2.4ghx (6core)
128gb ram
Intel 520 10 gb (2 ports)

I have other misc parts sitting around also.

thanks for the look!
 
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DrKK

FreeNAS Generalissimo
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This is a RAID controller, and not a proper HBA?
 

SweetAndLow

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Things you don't want to use, sd cards, raid controllers and fusion io cards

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
 

Mirfster

Doesn't know what he's talking about
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8 drive bays int on a Perc H710 raid controller (6 x 3tb drives and [2 x 25ogb ssd's if needed])
Perc H710 = Hardware Raid; so no good for FreeNAS. Suggest replacing that with either:
  • LSI 9211-8i
  • Perc H200 or Perc H310 (I prefer to cross-flash these)
  • IBM M1015 (cross-flashed)
Perc h810 connected to a MD1220 (DAS) with 24 x 600gb 10k sas (2.5in drives)
Perc H810 = Hardware Raid; so no good for FreeNAS. Suggest replacing that with something like LSI 9200-8e or LSI 9207-8e; could even do the 12 Gbs models if so inclined but not sure of full need/compatibility
I'm thinking of using iscsi or nfs.
If so, then consider Mirrored vDevs for performance. What Make/Model are the 2 SSDs? May consider them for SLOG and L2ARC, but would depend a bit on the Make/Model...

Agree with skipping the SD Cards.
Don't really know about the Fusion IO Cards. Will defer to the knowledge of others. Would be a shame if they couldn't be used with FreeNas though...
 

Carl Swift

Dabbler
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Only reason I thought of the Sd cards is because the module itself is a mirror and if freenas needed a min of 8 gb these are 16gb. ESP if the boot drive for freenas doesn't matter with 192Gb of ram. The ssd's i have are intel 510 series 250gb. I have 4 more sitting around.
 

Carl Swift

Dabbler
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Perc H710 = Hardware Raid; so no good for FreeNAS. Suggest replacing that with either:
  • LSI 9211-8i
  • Perc H200 or Perc H310 (I prefer to cross-flash these)
  • IBM M1015 (cross-flashed)

Perc H810 = Hardware Raid; so no good for FreeNAS. Suggest replacing that with something like LSI 9200-8e or LSI 9207-8e; could even do the 12 Gbs models if so inclined but not sure of full need/compatibility

If so, then consider Mirrored vDevs for performance. What Make/Model are the 2 SSDs? May consider them for SLOG and L2ARC, but would depend a bit on the Make/Model...

Agree with skipping the SD Cards.
Don't really know about the Fusion IO Cards. Will defer to the knowledge of others. Would be a shame if they couldn't be used with FreeNas though...


I have a h310 how do you cross flash it?
 

Nick2253

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DrKK

FreeNAS Generalissimo
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I don't get it Why is not good hardware raid for freenas?
The whole purpose to FreeNAS is software RAID. That's literally its entire purpose.
 

xlameee

Explorer
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I've lost lots of information from software raid hardware. Not because the HDD failure but the hardware failure. Why is freenas any better?
 

garm

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Because FreeNAS uses ZFS and it’s magically stable. But the reason you lost data isn’t because you used software raid, it’s because you equated raid with backup. ZFS might still fail, but the data written is practically guaranteed. This means your backups are intact the day you need them.
 

kdragon75

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Also if your hardware raid goes bad and you can't get the same card in a reasonable amount if time, you're screwed. With ZFS, ANY (modern) server that can read the individual drives can import the pool and read the data. There is also the fact that with ZFS and striped mirrors (you know, for performance like you looking for) you can not only detect data errors, you can tell which copy is good and recover from that error. Hardware RAID generally can only tell that there was an error and has no way of knowing what copy is good. Look into any of the giant NetApp or IBM arrays, they are all software RAID some even have disk 520 blocks to store checksums (not the best way of doing it but better than nothing). Again this is all done in software.
I'll admit for your physical 2u non-BSD servers, hardware RAID1 makes sense but for much more than that, ZFS served over FC or iSCSI is the way to go for any critical data.
 
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xlameee

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I had FreeNAS on esxi R710 server with MD1220 and 8x Seagate Barracuda 4TB each I've created 8x single RAID 0 so I can connect them to a esxi then imported them to FreeNAS with 2 parity drives similar to raid6 and after 2 weeks 1 of the disk failed the whole vm crashed down so I had to force to shut down the freenas vm and I couldn't even powered on to recover from that. Said one of the disk was missing and that;s it I couldn't even edit the vm settings. So I had to reinstall the freenas I don't know what I did wrong but in hardware raid all I had to do is unplug the bad HDD plug the new one Start the DELL EMC open manage software and add the new hdd to the raid array That's it. I am not saying the freenas is bad no I am using it in each of my 3 locations but I prefer hardware raid imported to a freenas vm if something goes bad dell have more then enough tools to help me fix the problem.

Because FreeNAS uses ZFS and it’s magically stable. But the reason you lost data isn’t because you used software raid, it’s because you equated raid with backup. ZFS might still fail, but the data written is practically guaranteed. This means your backups are intact the day you need them.

If you want your data and let say you need 20TB of total drives you will have to buy 40TB of HDD at least to ensure your data stay safe no matter if it is hardware to software raid duplicating is more important. I usually buy 3 times the TB I need 2 times for duplication and 1 for offline storage.
 

kdragon75

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I've created 8x single RAID 0
I don't mean to be rude but learn from @xlameee, DO NOT use a RAID card ANYWHERE in the FreeNAS storage stack. DO NOT use VMDKs for FreeNAS storage (this is ok for playing around just not for storing any data). the ONLY time RAID and FreeNAS might be ok together in production is for the boot disk.
to ensure your data stay safe no matter if it is hardware to software raid duplicating is more important.
That and a proper implementation. You can have RAIDz3 with a faulty design and still lose everything.
I prefer hardware raid imported to a freenas vm if something goes bad dell have more then enough tools to help me fix the problem.
This is demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of how FreeNAS and ZFS work. This is how things go wrong.
 

Ericloewe

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In all honesty, the notion that closed-source software that has been forgotten for years, and before that was probably served from the home directory of someone who hadn't worked at the vendor for years, running on an embedded system could in any way be safer than an open-source filesystem with very active development ongoing and extremely engaged user base and does not rely on proprietary hardware is ridiculous.
 
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