Drive Configuration Question

[Harold Roberts]

Here is my setup. What I would like to know is what is the best way to configure it?

External Esata drive bay with 5 8TB drives
External Esata drive bay with 2 4TB drives
Internal 4 6TB Drives.

I will installl my OS onto a 32gb USB drive. Since I am new to ZFS and all of it's RAID configurations, I am trying to determine how I should set this box up.

Mostly it will be used to store files, Music, Media, and a couple of Databases for inventory programs. I would also like to configure a TFTP server for backing up my Cisco Switches and Router configs, as well as host the download files for CIsco IP phones.

I should also mention that one of these 8TB drives has all of the data I need to keep on it (About 5TB). I would like to create a pool in freenas, import this drive (trying to figure out how to do this) copy all of it's data over and then add it into the pool as well.

Thanks for any suggestions. I have tried to read the ZFS Primer but as I am not familiar with ZFS, I am not really understanding it.

 

[BigDave]

Here is my setup. What I would like to know is what is the best way to configure it?

eSATA as an interface is do-able with the proper hardware, but there remains some left out info
which may be important in the overall setup here.
Questions:
1) Are the drive bays (you mention) able to allow smart data to be available to FreeNAS?
The answer needs to be YES to even consider the drive bays for safe/secure use.
2)Do the drive bays have separate power supplies and are they protected by a UPS?

Typically with eleven drives totaling over 60TB, the investment of capital for the drives alone
would IMHO mean a single chassis home with redundant PSUs and a high quality UPS. That's just
me though, I'm admittedly not an IT professional so take my advice with a grain of salt ;)

 

[Harold Roberts]

eSATA as an interface is do-able with the proper hardware, but there remains some left out info
which may be important in the overall setup here.
Questions:
1) Are the drive bays (you mention) able to allow smart data to be available to FreeNAS?
The answer needs to be YES to even consider the drive bays for safe/secure use.
2)Do the drive bays have separate power supplies and are they protected by a UPS?

Typically with eleven drives totaling over 60TB, the investment of capital for the drives alone
would IMHO mean a single chassis home with redundant PSUs and a high quality UPS. That's just
me though, I'm admittedly not an IT professional so take my advice with a grain of salt ;)

Yes FreeNAS is able to get smart Data from the drives. Also both are on separate power supplies and are connected to a UPS with the server. They are also plugged in to the whole house generator.

This is in my house and isn't in any type of a critical system, just want to maximize the use of FreeNAS and the ZFS file system.

Harold

 

[BigDave]

Yes FreeNAS is able to get smart Data from the drives. Also both are on separate power supplies and are connected to a UPS with the server. They are also plugged in to the whole house generator.

This is in my house and isn't in any type of a critical system, just want to maximize the use of FreeNAS and the ZFS file system.

Harold

Please know that what you propose is not even close to being OK in my opinion

In that case I would avoid configuring a volume using any drives in a separated fashion. By that I mean
don't form a volume using drives from two different drive bays. I would configure each group of drives
as a separate volume.
Keep in mind that an A/C adapter could burn out and the drives in THAT external bay would drop out of
Vdev they were part of. This could/would spell total loss of the data in that Vdev.


External Esata drive bay with 5 8TB drives = tank1
External Esata drive bay with 2 4TB drives = tank2
Internal 4 6TB Drives = tank3

Name the volumes as you wish of course, the use of tank was just an example...

 

[Arwen]

One comment about eSATA enclosures. Make absolutely certain they do not include a
SATA port multiplier. One somewhat easy way to tell is if they have an eSATA connector
for each and every drive. If the external eSATA enclosure does not, then it MUST have
a SATA port multiplier.

SATA port multipliers are highly NOT recommended. That said, SAS port expanders ARE
highly recommended. They are a different beast altogether. And backward compatible
with SATA. Plus, SAS allows some weird things like 4 SAS ports to 12 disks.