FreeNAS Build, 7 Drives RaidZ2?

[Miniwehats]

Just throwing a build together in this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112300

I currently have 7 drives for the build 6 are 1.5tb and 1 that is 2tb, so I am guessing I am going to loose the 500gb off that drive but oh well.

I keep running into drive setups and everyone is having 6 drives in raidz2, can I do 7? so... 5+2? this is just for home use, would you recommend I just do 6+1 Raidz1 and get more storage out of it? I like the security of the double parody. Also is it recommended to have 2 flash drives hooked in incase 1 goes down would it swap to the others image?

 

[ProtoSD]

Yes, you can do that. I have a 5 drive z2 pool and my performance is nothing to complain about. I would like to make it 6, but moving eveything off and on would be a hassle. I might suggest making your's a 6 disk pool also and using the 7th disk as a spare. It's almost a given that 1 of your disks will fail sooner than later...

 

[Miniwehats]

Yes, you can do that. I have a 5 drive z2 pool and my performance is nothing to complain about. I would like to make it 6, but moving eveything off and on would be a hassle. I might suggest making your's a 6 disk pool also and using the 7th disk as a spare. It's almost a given that 1 of your disks will fail sooner than later...

So do a raidz1? and have it 5+1 with 1 spare? Whats the difference in just doing 5+2?

 

[Miniwehats]

I think i understand it now because z1 was better preformance than z2 so I would do 5+1 z1 and have a spare. Is that correct?

 

[paleoN]

I think i understand it now because z1 was better preformance than z2 so I would do 5+1 z1 and have a spare. Is that correct?

Not at all.

I might suggest making your's a 6 disk pool also and using the 7th disk as a spare. It's almost a given that 1 of your disks will fail sooner than later...

That would be the 6 1.5TB drives in a raidz2 pool with the 2TB as a spare. Don't start being a cheap bastard now. Storage is dirt cheap and going to get cheaper barring any more floods. You were right in your first post to want double-parity.

They are multiple reasons why people use a 6 disk raidz2 pool. Among them are: many cases max out at 6 3.5" bays by default, the recommendation is to start raidz2 with 6 disks and a 6 disk raidz2 pool is an optimal zpool configuration.

 

[Miniwehats]

Not at all.

That would be the 6 1.5TB drives in a raidz2 pool with the 2TB as a spare. Don't start being a cheap bastard now. Storage is dirt cheap and going to get cheaper barring any more floods. You were right in your first post to want double-parity.

They are multiple reasons why people use a 6 disk raidz2 pool. Among them are: many cases max out at 6 3.5" bays by default, the recommendation is to start raidz2 with 6 disks and a 6 disk raidz2 pool is an optimal zpool configuration.

Ah I see now, 4+2... well that only gives me a 6tb volume which I currently have about 5.5TB of data to dump onto it, I was hoping for more space... I guess I can pick up another 1.5tb drive that will max out my case of 8 bays but then I will have 2tb or so open and that should take me a while to fill and that gives me double parody and 1 spare. Or I can do 7 drive z2 without a spare and have the same amount of room but no spare...

 

[paleoN]

Ah I see now, 4+2... well that only gives me a 6tb volume which I currently have about 5.5TB of data to dump onto it, I was hoping for more space... I guess I can pick up another 1.5tb drive that will max out my case of 8 bays but then I will have 2tb or so open and that should take me a while to fill and that gives me double parody and 1 spare.

What's a while? How much space are you going to need a year from now? I assume you want your NAS to last at least a year? I would want it to last longer. How will you upgrade it when it does get filled or will you just build a new NAS?

 

[Miniwehats]

What's a while? How much space are you going to need a year from now? I assume you want your NAS to last at least a year? I would want it to last longer. How will you upgrade it when it does get filled or will you just build a new NAS?

I am not entirely sure I think it will take me quite a while to fill 1tb, I filled the first 5 really fast but have slowed down a ton. I want my NAS to last a long long time, as far as upgrading goes I was planning on swapping out my 1.5tb drives slowly with 3tb drives and selling them. or just do it all at once and get like 4x3tb drives but this is down the road. I will have to look over my data again and see truly how much data I have and how much I will have open with either z2 with spare and without.

 

[cyberjock]

paleoN is trying to make a point. Upgrading is difficult (and expensive!) once you've built your zpool. Please review the presentation in my signature(specifically the part about upgrading!) to be sure you are making the right choice for you. In my experience, as soon as people see how easy it is to keep all of their data on a NAS, they'll find new ways to fill it. 1TB isn't alot of storage space these days.

 

[Miniwehats]

paleoN is trying to make a point. Upgrading is difficult (and expensive!) once you've built your zpool. Please review the presentation in my signature(specifically the part about upgrading!) to be sure you are making the right choice for you. In my experience, as soon as people see how easy it is to keep all of their data on a NAS, they'll find new ways to fill it. 1TB isn't alot of storage space these days.

oh man that power point was very helpful I understand now that its best to do the z2 with 6 and 1 spare. I am also pretty happy with my build, I have an older server im turning into this box but it should be plenty of power, core 2 2.6ghz than can be clocked to 3.0 if needed for L2ARC, 16gb DDR3 Ram and 8 Sata ports. I also have a 32 gig SSD laying around not in use I can toss in for L2ARC. so running z2 4+2 I will have just about 1tb free, and keep in mind these drives have housed my data for a while now its going to take a bit to fill the 1tb but I will fill it for sure, replacing the drives one by one is an option....I am a bit limited by my case with only 8 bays. my only other options would be to create another Vdev and add it to the zpool but I will need enough drives to make a good vdev to work with the z2poolm and thats to many drives in the case anyways. I am also correct in saying the 1 single drive I have is 2tb and the rest are 1.5, I will loose the 500gig on that drive right? Its actually going to have to be a parody drive because its biggest right? You also mentioned in the end that it works great in VMware? I assume for testing only? I would love to do this on a VM but I can see how doing a z2 with a bunch of VMDKs is a good idea...

 

[ProtoSD]

oh man that power point was very helpful I understand now that its best to do the z2 with 6 and 1 spare. I am also pretty happy with my build, I have an older server im turning into this box but it should be plenty of power, core 2 2.6ghz than can be clocked to 3.0 if needed for L2ARC, 16gb DDR3 Ram and 8 Sata ports. I also have a 32 gig SSD laying around not in use I can toss in for L2ARC.

It sounds like you're off to a great start hardware wise. It's really better to do it correct from the beginning than doing it later.

so running z2 4+2 I will have just about 1tb free, and keep in mind these drives have housed my data for a while now its going to take a bit to fill the 1tb but I will fill it for sure

You proabably don't want to fill that last TB all the way, you'll lose a bit of performance with ZFS if your pool is over 75% ?? full.

I am also correct in saying the 1 single drive I have is 2tb and the rest are 1.5, I will loose the 500gig on that drive right?

Yes, you'll lose 500GB

Its actually going to have to be a parody drive because its biggest right?

You don't get to choose your parity disks, ANY 2 of your disk act as parity, the parity is lets say striped, it's all automatic.

You also mentioned in the end that it works great in VMware? I assume for testing only? I would love to do this on a VM but I can see how doing a z2 with a bunch of VMDKs is a good idea...

Yeah, having a bunch of virtual disks that all live on the same physical disk is not a good idea. Its great just for testing.

 

[cyberjock]

I use FreeNAS in a virtualbox right now when I want to do nasty things I'd never do on my production servers. It's handy for doing things like killing a hard drive and seeing the response without buying a second server. Ideally you'd want hardware level access for FreeNAS. ESXi is an odd beast. If you want to use it and you know what you are doing it can work out very well for you. If you've never used ESXi I don't recommend you start just for FreeNAS.

 

[Miniwehats]

Thanks for all the feedback, I finally got it built and its running just trying to decide on what I want to do here. To correct a few things... I have 7 drives, 2 2tb drives and 5 1.5tb drives. I am either going to do a 6disk z2 with 1 spare, or my other thought was to take the 2tb drives and 1 1.5tb drive and make a 3 disk vdev (vdev1) and make a second 3 disk vdev (vdev2) with the 1.5 drives and have them in the same zpool. Question with this, will the spare drive be applied to the zpool or a certain vdev? Also my thinking behind this is Vdev1 could be expanded by swapping out that 1.5 for a 2tb and I would expand it that way. And then im guessing set that freed up 1.5 as a spare? Sorry hope my questions are not getting annoying, I might have read to many guides and now im confusing my self.

 

[Miniwehats]

Thanks for all the feedback, I finally got it built and its running just trying to decide on what I want to do here. To correct a few things... I have 7 drives, 2 2tb drives and 5 1.5tb drives. I am either going to do a 6disk z2 with 1 spare, or my other thought was to take the 2tb drives and 1 1.5tb drive and make a 3 disk vdev (vdev1) and make a second 3 disk vdev (vdev2) with the 1.5 drives and have them in the same zpool. Question with this, will the spare drive be applied to the zpool or a certain vdev? Also my thinking behind this is Vdev1 could be expanded by swapping out that 1.5 for a 2tb and I would expand it that way. And then im guessing set that freed up 1.5 as a spare? Sorry hope my questions are not getting annoying, I might have read to many guides and now im confusing my self.

Guess I need to research more, what I said above will work....Incrased IOPS but greater risk doing 2 vdevs correct? But I could expand it....