FreeNAS + WiFi + ZFS Slices (partitions) + DVI TV

[Computer.Pers]

Hi All!
I have installed FreeNAS 11.1-U2 to the next hardware:

Motherboard: Gigabyte H77N-WiFi
WiFi module: Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2230
RAM: 2x4Gb
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz

I have different sized hard drives:
1 x 250 GB
1 x 750 GB
1 x 1000 GB

and I'm planning to buy one more 1x1000 GB SATA drive (motherboard supports up to 4xSATA drives) and by 2xUSB Sticks for FreeNAS installation.

I'm planning to add FreeNAS to my home network as follows:

So according to the picture I want FreeNAS:
* Create an additional WiFi bridge point
* Shows films on my TV
* Use of Partitions instead of whole drives

I have found that FreeNAS does not support of partitions - is that true or i have missed something?
Did not found any support of WiFi and DVI connections to TV (films show).

Is it possible to make my setup possible even with some console coding?
Can FreeNAS import zpool made with partitions?

 

[wblock]

Yes, it is technically possible to make a pool out of partitions. In fact, FreeNAS does that. Drives have a single large data partition and a small one for swap. But using multiple data partitions on a single drive will make it very likely to fail. Consider what happens to ZFS redundancy. Say the mirror partition on a drive fails. So you replace that drive... but it also had a RAIDZ1 partition, which did not fail, but is now gone.

 

[Computer.Pers]

Hi!
Why would RAIDZ1 partition gone with only one part of it has failed?
As I understood RAIDZ1 is like RAID5 that has tolerance to 1 drive fail. So when I will physically replace failed drive I have to recreate partitions as they were before and tell zfs to rebuild with new partition.

So if it technically possible with FreeNAS to use partition geometry how to do that (I mean add manually created zpool to FreeNAS)?

 

[wblock]

Why would RAIDZ1 partition gone with only one part of it has failed?

The terminology here is wrong. RAIDZ1 will not fail when only drive (partition in this case) goes away. The problem is that when a single drive dies, replacing it will require resilvering all the volumes that depend on partitions on it.

So when I will physically replace failed drive I have to recreate partitions as they were before and tell zfs to rebuild with new partition.

Yes. But you will have to manually replace every partition on a failed drive. It increases complexity and reduces redundancy, making it less reliable and more difficult to maintain. It will also drastically reduce performance when multiple volumes on the same drive are accessed because of head contention.

So if it technically possible with FreeNAS to use partition geometry how to do that (I mean add manually created zpool to FreeNAS)?

It is the same process as normal: create a pool using partitions, then import it in the GUI. I'm hesitant to give more detail, because that might imply I think this a good idea.

 

[Computer.Pers]

Thanks, I'll try partitions and make tests for redundancy like removing hard drive and replacing it.
Now other questions still needs an attention - what about wifi support and DVI?

For films we have PLEX, that i have tried and its functional. But it is network streaming solution. Looks like i need to find some Plex Client for FreeNAS - do we have any?

 

[wblock]

FreeNAS is an appliance. It has no support for being a wireless relay or video output. It might be possible to implement those functions as VMs, but having only 8G of RAM limits VMs. The head contention issue with the volumes could complicate that at all.

The goal of all this is not clear. Why compromise FreeNAS to such a degree? Disks and HBAs are pretty cheap in small numbers, and allow FreeNAS to do the thing it is designed to do: protect your data.

 

[Computer.Pers]

Sure, FreeNAS primary goal is to provide NAS solution.
But we are at the point where our NAS downloading torrents, managing VMs, making stream services, integrating with clouds and so on.
I think it cold be better when it can shows video itself, not just streaming and making some wifi work.

I have hardware and trying to use it at maximum.

Sure, I understand limitations like "8 Gig is not enough". But I don't understand limitations like "Its not NAS function": FreeNAS is appliance, as you said, based on FreeBSD and it can much more then commercial NAS solutions.