Got my first install done, on to tweaking...

[Fr Jonah]

Just wanted to introduce myself, even though several of you have already been a big help to me on the couple of threads I've created... I own a small printing/manufacturing company with lots of digital assets, which are, basically, the reason we are constructing the NAS. We are based in the mountains of WV (I know, that's redundant) about 30 minutes outside of Huntington (anyone else nearby?). We primarily do work related to beautifying Orthodox Christian Churches... producing icons, frescoes, etc. We currently have 3 full time employees but are expanding thanks to some modest growth, so the server will be serving user files and company documents as necessary as well. The flexibility of freenas is proving to be perfect for our application.

For our first NAS, I recently picked up on old Rackable (SGI) server (C1000) with SAS expander and, so far, everything is going pretty well (thanks to help from some of the forum members). The install went smoothly, though I did have to switch out a non-cooperative LSI MegaRaid card for the freenas friendlier M1015... that made a *world* of difference. Thanks to advice from forum members, I'm looking into increasing the size of my pool and, probably, upgrading to 32GB of RAM in the near future. We are currently seeing best case transfer rates of around 90mb/s. While I'd love to see more out of our setup, this is so far beyond anything we saw before that I have no real complaints. Before we settle on our current vdev/pool allocations, though, I will be working to try to optimize the setup a bit more.

One thing I'd love to see on this forum is a thread where users simply post their setups, versions and what kinds of transfer speeds they're getting under the various share services (Is there a thread like that? I have looked but, so far, haven't been able to find it.) For the extra brave, perhaps we could even upload a few photos of our systems for reference. If there was, furthermore, a standard set of benchmarks (I have seen the thread on that...) that we all used before reporting our results, that could yield some very meaningful comparison data for those of us who are specifically working on optimizing our throughput.

If there's already a thread (perhaps a *sticky*) like this, then please forgive my inability to find it.

This seems like a very helpful and knowledgeable forum and I'm excited to be a part of it... hopefully I'll one day be in a position to help others like you've been helping me :)

 

[DrKK]

Congratulations on your setup.

I would recommend that you have the following going, ASAP:

1. Scheduled ZFS scrubs, probably twice per month
2. Scheduled "long" SMART tests, probably twice per month, staggered with the scrubs
3. A reasonable, and appropriate, ZFS snapshot regime
4. Email alerts properly configured to you can be notified if there's a problem
5. Also, one thing that can really save your bacon, is a backup of your "config" file. If you ever have to reinstall your FreeNAS, it will be a simple matter of restoring the config file, *IF* you have it backed up.

The truth is, with the proper maintenance set up, and the proper hardware, your data is at literally almost no risk of loss, on a properly configured, properly maintained, FreeNAS system, especially if you have a backup solution, and there is no massive physical destruction of the equipment.

Almost every person we see that loses their pool did so because they listened to a "friend" who didn't know shit, and in particular, because they did *NOT* have the small set of maintenance tasks set up, like the ones I list above.

 

[Fr Jonah]

DrKK,

Thank you for the very sound advice!

Hopefully, I'll be doing the final setup this week after we build a little sound dampening server cabinet (since our unit sounds like a couple of jets at the present time). We upgraded to 10 disks to optimize the Raidz2 vdev and everything seems to be working great. The next steps I had hoped to learn about are related to maintaining the system, and your list provides a perfect bibliography of areas to research and implement.

One thing I would add for those who find freenas and want to hurry through the setup... while wait times for cables, drives, etc. can be a bit "frustrating" when you're in the frenzy of a building your perfect NAS, those wait times provide a perfect time to read the manual and research freenas best practices. I definitely see that it's better to go slow and use recommended hardware and volume designs than to rush things and wind up being stuck with inferior or even unreliable setups that can't be changed without destroying your pool.

 

[DrKK]

The best thing *ANYONE* can do that's thinking of using FreeNAS:

Download the CD ISO. Install it ***INTO A VMWARE PLAYER*** virtual machine, and just play with it. With make believe drives. Practice setting it up. Practice setting up shares. Practice uploading, downloading. Practice tweaking certain interesting options, to understand them better. Practice with jails. And very importantly: Practice simulating a busted drive (simply delete it in the VM setup), and replacing it with a new drive. Observe how everything works.

DO THIS FOR SEVERAL WEEKS for a couple hours per day.

Then, and only then, make a "real" box.