bhay
Cadet
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2016
- Messages
- 1
All, I have been using FreeNAS for a few years now and I wanted to take time and share my story.
First of all, I love reading threads where CJ jumps in. This guy has the knowledge as well as the prow(l)ess to provide the support all of us need. And, you get it for free! Why am I doing this? Perhaps it is just time. Knowledge is power, and it does not matter who has that knowledge. As a collective, we all succeed as a result of input from each other.
Many years ago, a partner from Microsoft walked over to my desk with excitement and showed me what I suspect now was VMware Workstation. I'm sure all readers are aware of what that is, but during that brief moment of his excitement, I laughed and said, "oh ya, RDP - I can do that too." Not so many years ago a friend showed me Minecraft and I simply said "dude, that's a joke." A few years after that the same friend showed me FreeNAS/ZFS and I chuckled.
It didn't take long and I realized VMware Workstation wasn't RDP, and Minecraft was certainly worth trying. I built a FreeNAS server ignoring all the rules and then laughed again at my friend touting my RAID controller and perhaps mumbling something about "you can have my RAID5 when you pry it from my dead fingers..." I hope the reader is laughing by now at my repeated ignorance. But wait, my RAID5 was faster... OK, now I'm laughing after learning so much about ZFS.
I'm a true believer now. The value of data integrity needs to climb very high on everyone's list. If integrity is not a requirement, and I am sure those workloads exist, then stick with your hardware RAID controller. But, if losing that precious picture of a family member means something, ZFS is where that file needs to sit.
I'll try to wrap up my introduction quickly as I understand the frustrations of a wall of text. I think my first worthy-0f-mention build was the somewhat recent release of ASRock's octocore motherboard. Loaded with 32GB ECC ram, and placed into the SilverStone DS380 seemed a sure win for small form factor, and eight externally removable disk drives. All and all, it was truly a win.
I made, what in my opinion was a big mistake, of loading this server with slow 3TB hard drives. I still have this server, but after other frustrations I decided to go the gusto on the cheap (relatively speaking) and build a new server with dual Xeon six core processors, 192 GB ram, and awesome hot swapable (x12) Rosewill case. The same lousy disks are in this box (8x 3TB configured RAID10 style), but it works well. I know it is overkill, but I was tired of wondering if this or that was a problem...
By the way, I do not want any reader to think when I refer to a problem that ZFS was ever the issue. Some of the issues are still mysteries that even the most tech-savvy may not know. For example, why can't I get at least 2gbits performance from an ESXi server appropriately configured? Well, I have no clue, but I will suggest this. ESXi is configured to be "aware" of its hardware and it will not necessarily saturate a link that might impact performance somewhere else. For example, my configuration is not ideal, but works fine for me at home and that is a shared network for both data and storage. Some may agree this is not ideal, but VMware already accounts for that to some degree.
Let me wrap up by stating that I hope I post more responses now that I have introduced myself. I also highly recommend veterans and noobs alike pay close attention to what folks such as CJ have to say regardless of how crass those comments may be. These guys are providing feedback at no cost to us readers.
Now, who has something whammy to show me that I can laugh at, then be laughed at about a year later?
First of all, I love reading threads where CJ jumps in. This guy has the knowledge as well as the prow(l)ess to provide the support all of us need. And, you get it for free! Why am I doing this? Perhaps it is just time. Knowledge is power, and it does not matter who has that knowledge. As a collective, we all succeed as a result of input from each other.
Many years ago, a partner from Microsoft walked over to my desk with excitement and showed me what I suspect now was VMware Workstation. I'm sure all readers are aware of what that is, but during that brief moment of his excitement, I laughed and said, "oh ya, RDP - I can do that too." Not so many years ago a friend showed me Minecraft and I simply said "dude, that's a joke." A few years after that the same friend showed me FreeNAS/ZFS and I chuckled.
It didn't take long and I realized VMware Workstation wasn't RDP, and Minecraft was certainly worth trying. I built a FreeNAS server ignoring all the rules and then laughed again at my friend touting my RAID controller and perhaps mumbling something about "you can have my RAID5 when you pry it from my dead fingers..." I hope the reader is laughing by now at my repeated ignorance. But wait, my RAID5 was faster... OK, now I'm laughing after learning so much about ZFS.
I'm a true believer now. The value of data integrity needs to climb very high on everyone's list. If integrity is not a requirement, and I am sure those workloads exist, then stick with your hardware RAID controller. But, if losing that precious picture of a family member means something, ZFS is where that file needs to sit.
I'll try to wrap up my introduction quickly as I understand the frustrations of a wall of text. I think my first worthy-0f-mention build was the somewhat recent release of ASRock's octocore motherboard. Loaded with 32GB ECC ram, and placed into the SilverStone DS380 seemed a sure win for small form factor, and eight externally removable disk drives. All and all, it was truly a win.
I made, what in my opinion was a big mistake, of loading this server with slow 3TB hard drives. I still have this server, but after other frustrations I decided to go the gusto on the cheap (relatively speaking) and build a new server with dual Xeon six core processors, 192 GB ram, and awesome hot swapable (x12) Rosewill case. The same lousy disks are in this box (8x 3TB configured RAID10 style), but it works well. I know it is overkill, but I was tired of wondering if this or that was a problem...
By the way, I do not want any reader to think when I refer to a problem that ZFS was ever the issue. Some of the issues are still mysteries that even the most tech-savvy may not know. For example, why can't I get at least 2gbits performance from an ESXi server appropriately configured? Well, I have no clue, but I will suggest this. ESXi is configured to be "aware" of its hardware and it will not necessarily saturate a link that might impact performance somewhere else. For example, my configuration is not ideal, but works fine for me at home and that is a shared network for both data and storage. Some may agree this is not ideal, but VMware already accounts for that to some degree.
Let me wrap up by stating that I hope I post more responses now that I have introduced myself. I also highly recommend veterans and noobs alike pay close attention to what folks such as CJ have to say regardless of how crass those comments may be. These guys are providing feedback at no cost to us readers.
Now, who has something whammy to show me that I can laugh at, then be laughed at about a year later?
