Hi,
I wanted to post a success story for those thinking about using FreeNAS.
Approx 7 years ago I installed FreeNAS 8.2 onto a server with 4 x 1TB Western Digital Green drives in a Raidz2. The hardware was under-speced but that is a different story (Acer H340 with 4GB RAM.. yikes). I got lucky with the 4GB of RAM.. don't take the chance.. use more.
Over the years I experienced two problems.
1. NIC dropping link occasionally.. driver issue.. switch to an intel NIC and never looked back
2. One hard drive started to fail. This killed the performance of my raid but it was VERY easy to replace the drive, resliver, and move on. (Success #1)
Fast forward 7 years.. I moved to a new house and had left my server powered off for 2 years.. When I went to power it back on I got some flashing lights and then.. no power. Likely power supply or motherboard failure (proprietary power supply).
I grabbed an old Dell T3500, installed FreeNAS 11.2 on it and then proceeded to add my 4 old drives to it.
I was able to easily import my pool from the GUI and I was back in business! (Success #2) it's impressive that FreeNAS 11.2 could import a pool I created 7 years ago with a much older software version. I thought I'd have to fight with configurations and drive mappings but instead it all just worked.
Final thoughts:
1. Take some time to understand how FreeNAS and ZFS works so that you can do your initial configuration properly (check out the resources section for more info). Once you do that you'll be laughing with a rock solid storage solution.. your drives are the only important part.. everything other part of the system is easy to replace.
I wanted to post a success story for those thinking about using FreeNAS.
Approx 7 years ago I installed FreeNAS 8.2 onto a server with 4 x 1TB Western Digital Green drives in a Raidz2. The hardware was under-speced but that is a different story (Acer H340 with 4GB RAM.. yikes). I got lucky with the 4GB of RAM.. don't take the chance.. use more.
Over the years I experienced two problems.
1. NIC dropping link occasionally.. driver issue.. switch to an intel NIC and never looked back
2. One hard drive started to fail. This killed the performance of my raid but it was VERY easy to replace the drive, resliver, and move on. (Success #1)
Fast forward 7 years.. I moved to a new house and had left my server powered off for 2 years.. When I went to power it back on I got some flashing lights and then.. no power. Likely power supply or motherboard failure (proprietary power supply).
I grabbed an old Dell T3500, installed FreeNAS 11.2 on it and then proceeded to add my 4 old drives to it.
I was able to easily import my pool from the GUI and I was back in business! (Success #2) it's impressive that FreeNAS 11.2 could import a pool I created 7 years ago with a much older software version. I thought I'd have to fight with configurations and drive mappings but instead it all just worked.
Final thoughts:
1. Take some time to understand how FreeNAS and ZFS works so that you can do your initial configuration properly (check out the resources section for more info). Once you do that you'll be laughing with a rock solid storage solution.. your drives are the only important part.. everything other part of the system is easy to replace.
