Brand New to FreeNAS

[John Hagensieker]

I just purchased a Lenovo TS140 and will likely throw 2 or 3 Red Hard drives in it. Can't decide between RAID 1 and RAIDZ configuration.

Never installed FreeNAS before. Should I install on a small internal SSD drive or do most users boot from a USB stick?

Any and all advice for my configuration appreciated. Home user looking for a redundant backup solution. 1 or 2 users tops, multiple devices. Want to operate OwnCloud as well maybe. Installing behind a pfSense firewall.

Thanks,

John in North Carolina

 

[danb35]

Should I install on a small internal SSD drive or do most users boot from a USB stick?

Either is acceptable, though SSDs are gaining in popularity (no doubt by decreasing in price).

 

[nojohnny101]

Like @danb35 said. If you're on a super tight budget, go USB (2 if you can and put them in a mirror).

Although if you have time to search you can probably find a cheap SSD or if you have a small one laying around, use a SSD.

RAID1 doesn't exist in FreeNAS. Checkout documentation for explanation of types. Raidz1 is normally not recommended but seeing as you are starting off with only 3 drives, it is your only choice besides a mirror if you can add a 4th drive. If you have some extra money, it would be ideal to start off with 6 drives in a raidz2 vdev. This is recommended because of its balance between performance and redundancy.

If you do go with raidz1, make sure you have a backup if your data.

 

[John Hagensieker]

nojohnny,

If I just install 2 - 3TB drives I can still mirror them, correct? Thanks for info. Headed back to the docs. Read through them some but that was before I dedicated to the Lenovo and now trying to formulate a more solid plan for my specific hardware. Thanks again.

 

[nojohnny101]

Correct. That would lose a lot to redundancy though. You need to decide what you will be storing on FreeNAS, how important it is to you if you lose it, and if you will have a backup (please don't tell me you won't ;))

Take your time and ask lots of questions. Better to plan properly now and spend money wisely then regret and have to buy twice to fix mistakes when your needs change/grow.

 

[John Hagensieker]

I have almost 1 TB of Apple Time Machine backups and 1 TB of critical data. So I really suppose I should jump to 4TB instead of 3 for future proofing. Redundancy is what I'm after. My current backup plan is 2 crammed Apple Time Capsules with one being carried off site and backed up every weekend. I figured I've needed a NAS for a while and I like dabbling with hardware appliances. Just set up pfSense firewall.

Been doing linux since the late 90's and even went through a FreeBSD stage but never got the hang of "Build the World" compared to just building a kernel :)

 

[nojohnny101]

Well then I can see why you thought to start off with raidz1. You need the space.

Is budget preventing you from starting with more drives? More important that drive size is vdev size. Remember (per the manual) once you create a vdev, the only way to increase its size is to replace all drives in the vdev with larger ones (the vdev will only become larger in total size once you replace all drives) or destroy the vdev and recreate wth more drives. Of course you could also stripe together multiple vdevs which is also an option

Have you read through cyberjock's beginner presentation yet? There is a lot of good information in there and it is almost an expectation that all should read and understand before starting a build.

 

[John Hagensieker]

Budget is no problem but I don't want to overbuild or overspend too much. It's fairly safe to say my storage requirements won't increase for 5 years appreciably. Not sure if I've seen the cyberjock docs yet or not as I've read a bunch of stuff but you can better believe I'll be looking it up within the hour.

 

[melloa]

If budget is not a problem I'd look for a safer raid option for your build, like, instead of 2 4tb HDs, a pool with smaller HDs using one of the available raid options.
Regarding ssd, a quick search on the web showed pci options at an affordable price, but consider two boot devices to avoid down time - I did had one of my usb sticks failing on me some time ago.

 

[wblock]

RAID1 doesn't exist in FreeNAS.

That seems a little misleading. RAID1 is mirroring, and mirroring certainly is available. Two mirrored 4TB drives gives 4TB of space with redundancy. Three 4TB drives in RAIDZ1 gives 8TB of space with redundancy, but it is less redundant than a mirror.

 

[John Hagensieker]

wblock,

That's my sticking point right now. 2 or 3 drives. I really only need 2-3 TB of redundant back up right now with no increase in the appreciable future. Running Owncloud again (I used to do it on a Raspberry Pi) would be cool but I have an OpenVPN server and I can VPN in and VNC or use apps to get at my files already. Own cloud might be a bit redundant, but I like to dabble in everything.

 

[wblock]

I have never heard anybody say "I have too much free disk space." One thing to consider is just how much room there is in that cabinet. A quick search seemed to indicate three internal bays, but it wasn't clear. If there are four bays, or you could repurpose the one used by the DVD drive, then you could go with a 4TB mirror now and plan to add another mirror later if needed.

 

[nojohnny101]

sorry I was simply making a point about the terminology of tradition "raid1, raid5, raid 6" and such not really being used in FreeNAS. Should have clarified that similar equivalents do exist.

I have never heard anybody say "I have too much free disk space."

very true. it is a delicate balance though. In FreeNAS it is not recommended to fill a pool above 80%. At 90%, performance drops off a clip as FreeNAS goes into space saving move and sacrifices performance. If your storage needs truly won't increase for 5 years (I don't think I've ever heard this before :D) then based on you having roughly 2TB a 4tb mirror would make sense, as long as you understand the redundancy ratios. mirrors are much faster at resilvering so you have that going for you in case of drive failure and replacement. a 4TB mirror would put you at just above 50% utilization of your storage (once you take into account FreeNAS overhead and all that) which is a good number. some space below 80% but not like 10% where you would not be uinsg 70% of your space for the next 5 years (per your description and storage needs in the future).

 

[danb35]

My storage needs increased dramatically once I found Sickbeard and (to a lesser extent) CouchPotato.

 

[John Hagensieker]

Okay I just pulled the trigger on two WD Red 4TB drives and the plan is to mirror (for now) I like the idea of adding a third and getting 8TB with some redundancy however I'm aware you have to start all over if you do. Not a problem.

I must have a half a dozen old hard drives laying around. For the OS should I use an SSD or would a mechanical hard drive be okay for that? I realize of course a mechanical will work I guess I'm asking if performance is enhanced if the OS is on an SSD.

Again, I may be the only user of this thing and it will get light use. Nightly Time Machine backups and 1TB or so of hard data. I don't store music or videos. My large files are pdf's that are work related and when a new one comes out I delete the old one. I've had about a TB of data for years and just don't see me changing my ways any time soon. Slight increase in Time Machine backup size due to photos but I'm getting ready to dump one entire device out of the backups (sale) so my backup size will decrease by one third. 4TB is a lot for me. I have always hated wasted space since day 1 of computing. What do they call that? Obsessive / compulsive? = me.

 

[danb35]

For the OS should I use an SSD or would a mechanical hard drive be okay for that?

FreeNAS is designed to be installed on a small flash device. Think USB stick, CompactFlash card, or small (<= 30 GB) SSD. It will work just fine on a larger or a mechanical device, but you'll be wasting space on that device because all it will be doing is storing the OS which only takes a few GB most of the time. An SSD will have better performance than a USB stick or an HDD, but boot device performance really isn't a factor most of the time. The OS isn't loaded onto a ramdisk any more, as it was in earlier versions, but ZFS caching still ensures that most of it will live in RAM most of the time.

Now, with that said, my OS is installed on a 120 GB SSD. That's at least 4x as large as it needs to be, but I had it laying around, and didn't want to scavenge one of the SATA DOMs from my old server, and didn't have anything better to do with it.