FreeNAS drive compatibility

[fdh5555]

Hello,

I'm considering moving from Synology to FreeNAS due to performance issues. However I'm a little worried about the drive compatibility since Synology has really crappy hardware compatibility and I suspect it might be the same for most non-Windows machines.

So here's my current plan:
Mobo: ASRock Rack D1541D4I-2L2T
HBA: LSI SAS 9211-8i
Storage drives: 8 x Seagate st8000nm0016, 6 for RAIDZ2 and 2 for mirror
VM drives: 2 x Seagate Nytro XF1230 480GB, mirror
Boot drive: Intel m.2 Optane 16GB or 32GB

Does anyone have any experience with listed hardware, especially those drives? It seems that there are people having problems with st10000nm0016 and I personally had bad experience with st8000nm0016 and Synology. Also I can't find any real life experience with XF1230 online.

Thanks

 

[Chris Moore]

since Synology has really crappy hardware compatibility and I suspect it might be the same for most non-Windows machines.

No, not at all. That is a problem with Synology.

6 for RAIDZ2 and 2 for mirror

What is the purpose of a separate mirror?

VM drives: 2 x Seagate Nytro XF1230 480GB, mirror

What is the purpose of another separate mirror using 'read intensive' SSDs that are limited by the speed of SATA?
What kind of VMs are you planning to run, because the speed of SSD may be wasted money.

Boot drive: Intel m.2 Optane 16GB or 32GB

The juice of M.2 is not worth the squeeze (more cost than it is worth) especially for the purpose of a boot drive which is barely used by FreeNAS, other that when the system actually boots from it.
Have you looked through the hardware guides?

FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

PS. What chassis had you thought to put this in?

 

[Chris Moore]

PPS. I would say there are better system boards for the purpose. Those teeny tiny boards are usually more of a problem than they are worth.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Same questions as above, what is the extra hdd mirror for? And why the extra strange ssds?

The xeon-d system are usually more money then they are worth. Hdd compatibility should not be an issue they are pretty much standard interfaces.

 

[fdh5555]

What is the purpose of a separate mirror?

Private trackers, I don't want to stress my main pool too much.

What is the purpose of another separate mirror using 'read intensive' SSDs that are limited by the speed of SATA?
What kind of VMs are you planning to run, because the speed of SSD may be wasted money.

A Windows 10 and a Ubuntu. I have to run some irreplaceable but badly coded programs that get somewhat slow on HDDs. XF1230 has power loss protection and fairly good DWPD in its price range. Would love to see some other options though. Also to be frank after using computers with SSDs for so long I simply don't wanna go back to HDDs again.

The juice of M.2 is not worth the squeeze (more cost than it is worth) especially for the purpose of a boot drive which is barely used by FreeNAS, other that when the system actually boots from it.

I've seen many people complaining about broken usb sticks on Reddit. So I don't see the point not to use the extra m.2 slot on the mobo other than cost.

Have you looked through the hardware guides?

Not yet, but I will.

PS. What chassis had you thought to put this in?

U-NAS NSC810

PPS. I would say there are better system boards for the purpose. Those teeny tiny boards are usually more of a problem than they are worth.

That's what I'm struggling with the most. I travel between countries few times a year because of my job and I'm still unsure of where to settle. I just want to have a NAS that has enough space and power but is still small enough to transport when the time comes, which is why I bought a small Synology NAS in the first place. I'll remove HDDs and other fragile/heavy parts first of course. Otherwise I can just get a Storinator or an enterprise rack server and be done with it.

 

[fdh5555]

Same questions as above, what is the extra hdd mirror for? And why the extra strange ssds?

The xeon-d system are usually more money then they are worth. Hdd compatibility should not be an issue they are pretty much standard interfaces.

Updated, please see above.

Hdd compatibility should not be an issue they are pretty much standard interfaces.

I had a really strange issue with Synology and ST8000NM0016. The write cache somehow couldn't be flushed properly to a point where I had to disable write cache to avoid random system freezes. Got a little paranoid after this.

 

[Chris Moore]

Also I can't find any real life experience with XF1230 online.

These must be relatively new on the market and they are certainly very mission specific. If all you are doing is running a couple of VMs (one Windows and one Linux) there is probably no need for anything more exotic than standard SSDs for storage of the VMs. I was running a few VMs on a pool of mirrored hard drives and found them to perform well enough for my task, but if you have something that is very demanding on the drives, your results may be quite different; and I was using a regular rack-mount server with a lot more drives. I would expect the XF1230 drives to work but I don't have any direct knowledge of them.

I had a really strange issue with Synology and ST8000NM0016. The write cache buffer somehow couldn't be flushed properly to a point where I had to disable write cache to avoid random system freezes. Got a little paranoid after this.

I know that there are many people using a variety of 8TB drives with FreeNAS, so I don't expect you will have any trouble with these.

U-NAS NSC810

That is a very space constrained system. I think the components you selected is about all you can fit in there.

I've seen many people complaining about broken usb sticks on Reddit. So I don't see the point not to use the extra m.2 slot on the mobo other than cost.

If you had a larger enclosure, I would suggest using a small capacity, regular, SSD as the boot drive, but I don't think you can fit another one in the case. I don't like the USB drives because I had two of them fail on me. They just are not meant for the constant use.

Private trackers, I don't want to stress my main pool too much.

You will be serving data to the internet with this? That could put a lot of strain on it. It will be interesting to see how it works out for you. If you will let us know what your results are?

I think, given your constraints, this is probably the best solution you can make, but you might save some cash with regular Samsung Pro SSDs instead of the ones you picked. I don't think the special features would be necessary.