Growing my first FreeNAS system: are these Bad Ideas (tm)?

[rmavillarica]

Greetings from the Philippines!

I have done a bunch of reading and learning in this forum and hope these are not silly questions.

I am currently using RAID1 with Ubuntu on some old Atom hardware and a couple of 3TB WD Red drives. I am beginning to run out of space and thought I would bite the bullet to protect data and my wife's photos (about 300GB per year). I would like to use some of my old hardware. I currently have:
2 pcs - WD Red 3TB - One of them has an unusually high Load Cycle Count - 100k+, the other has nine (9!).
1 pc - WD Green 3TB - I will wdidle all of the Green drives.
1 pc - WD Green 2TB
2 pcs - WD Green 1TB
3 pcs - Seagate 5TB USB - I think these are the shingle type drives, so I don't intend to use these.
2 pcs - 32 Sandisk ReadyCache SSD drives
2 pcs - Sandisk Cruzer Fit 8GB USB flash drives

I would like to buy 8TB or 10TB WD Red drives to make up the balance, plus an extra one as a cold spare. The 8/10 decision will be based on Camelcamelcamel price monitoring in the next month, and is slightly coupled with the X11SSM-F/X11SSL-CF decision: do I use the SSDs as mirrors, or save the SATA ports and use a couple of USBs? Maybe it would be better to spend the extra $85 and SAS breakout cables on the X11SSL-CF motherboard?

If mirrored USB flash drives are safe, I am thinking of running a 6+2 (10TB and USB boot drives) RAIDZ2 with a Supermicro X11SSM-F motherboard or an 8+2 (8TB or 10TB) RAIDZ2 with a Supermicro X11SSL-CF motherboard. In the case of the X11SSL-CF, I would use the mirrored SSD drives to boot.

If I run 6+2 drives, the calculator says I should have 4.296 TiB usable initially. If I run 8+2 drives, I should have 5.728 TiB usable. I have a bunch of media on the three 5TB drives I can migrate as capacity grows.

Can I start with one stick of 16GB ECC RAM and add more as I replace the smaller hard drives with larger hard drives that should be cheaper in the future?

Thank you!

Martin

 

[Ericloewe]

If mirrored USB flash drives are safe

You mean for the OS? Well, they're safe, but they're a pain in the ass. They're slow and unreliable.

Can I start with one stick of 16GB ECC RAM and add more

Yes, of course.

 

[rmavillarica]

Thank you, sir!

It looks like I shall veer towards the X11SLL-CF. I meant to ask more questions, if I may: Is 8+2 a reasonable number of drives for RAIDZ2? And is my capacity growing strategy sound?

Thanks again!

 

[Ericloewe]

Yes, 10-drive RAIDZ2 vdevs are okay. And yes, replacing smaller drives gradually is no problem.

 

[Stux]

Capacity will only grow based on the smallest drive.

Ie 10+3+3 is no better than 3+3+3

 

[Ericloewe]

Capacity will only grow based on the smallest drive.

Ie 10+3+3 is no better than 3+3+3

With this crazy mishmash of drives, the pool will be autoexpanding rather frequently.

 

[rmavillarica]

I just need to spread the expense out over 2-3 years. I am hoping it will expand by choice, and not involuntarily.

 

[rmavillarica]

Another question: in a mismatched array such as the one I am planning, if the biggest drive fails, can I replace it with another drive bigger than the smallest drive since the capacity is based on the smallest drive?

Thank you.

 

[Ericloewe]

I am hoping it will expand by choice, and not involuntarily.

You mean you don't want autoexpand on? That's fine, but you'll have to disable it manually.

Another question: in a mismatched array such as the one I am planning, if the biggest drive fails, can I replace it with another drive bigger than the smallest drive since the capacity is based on the smallest drive?

Thank you.

But smaller than the failed drive? I don't think I've ever seen that done, but I imagine it'll work fine.

 

[rmavillarica]

You mean you don't want autoexpand on? That's fine, but you'll have to disable it manually.

I meant to say that I hope I choose when to replace the drive in order to autoexpand, rather than having the drives fail.

But smaller than the failed drive? I don't think I've ever seen that done, but I imagine it'll work fine.

Okay, just planning my spare drive strategy.

Thank you.