Hi from Baltimore

[Breeze247]

Hello All. I finally got my first FreeNas build up and running. Thanks to everyone, as I have combed the treads for hardware recommendations. I'm currently using FreeNas to store HD video and backup data from my main pc. I plan to get the WD Reds to replace my Seagates 1TB 7200RPM desktop drives. From what I have read so far on the threads, the WD Reds are highly recommended. Has anyone used them to stream HD content? Looking to see if the WD Reds will be fast enough.

 

[DifferentStrokes]

Welcome!

 

[Nick2253]

The reds will be more than fast enough. My only recommended upgrade would be more memory if you use 3TB drives or larger. Based on your hardware list, you've got quite a beast there :)

 

[Breeze247]

The reds will be more than fast enough. My only recommended upgrade would be more memory if you use 3TB drives or larger. Based on your hardware list, you've got quite a beast there :)

Cool, Thanks. I'll be sure to add the ram to my list.

 

[Darren Myers]

I am using x7 4Tb WD Red's in RAIDz3 and they will do 3 streams of plex without issue, i say 3 because thats the most i have had people streaming from my movies, most people stream from my TV shows lol. The Reds will do you good, just make sure you document/label the serial numbers so you know what drive is what in the event of a failure/issue so you dont have to take out each drive to read its serial.

And be sure to have the minimum of 8Gb of RAM, if youre going to run plugins i would say 16 should be the minimum.

 

[Breeze247]

I am using x7 4Tb WD Red's in RAIDz3 and they will do 3 streams of plex without issue, i say 3 because thats the most i have had people streaming from my movies, most people stream from my TV shows lol. The Reds will do you good, just make sure you document/label the serial numbers so you know what drive is what in the event of a failure/issue so you dont have to take out each drive to read its serial.

And be sure to have the minimum of 8Gb of RAM, if youre going to run plugins i would say 16 should be the minimum.

Thanks for the advice Darren. I'll be getting the 2 or 3TB WD Reds and another 8GB ECC RAM stick soon. I plan to build an array of 10 drives total to create 2 vdevs. I will definitely make sure I document the new drives and the ones I'm currently running in the mean time lol.

 

[Nick2253]

Is there a reason you're going with 10 drives in two vdevs? If I had 10 drives, I'd put them in one vdev with RAIDZ3. You don't want to use RAIDZ1 anymore, and two RAIDZ2 arrays is 4 parity disks.

 

[Darren Myers]

I think a better layout would be 2 RAIDz2's of 6 drives each, RAIDz2's should be 4,6,8,10 drives in a single vdev, RAIDz3 should be 5/7/9/11, but never more then 11;and even 11 is pushing it.

 

[Nick2253]

The recommended drive numbers are no longer applicable to 99% of use cases. And even when they mattered, it was more about performance than any kind of compatibility.

For reasons of lost disk space, I'd go with RAIDZ3. If performance (specifically Random I/O) was important, I'd do two or more vdevs. If performance was really important, I'd do striped mirrors.

 

[Haysden Smart]

Almost any drives will stream HD video. Streaming HD video will only use a portion of your HDD speed and Network. The biggest bottleneck when streaming HD video is with Transcoding (if being used).

I use WD RED drives (8 of 2TB) and have had no issue with them. My previous NAS had 5 2TB WD Greed desktop drives and I had fault after fault as they simply do not like the amount of use a NAS puts them through. However I did have over 4TB of HD Video with 3 Clients streaming via Transcoder at the same time for several hours a day.

Go WD RED drives for reliability as the speed increase is not even noticeable.

 

[Breeze247]

Is there a reason you're going with 10 drives in two vdevs? If I had 10 drives, I'd put them in one vdev with RAIDZ3. You don't want to use RAIDZ1 anymore, and two RAIDZ2 arrays is 4 parity disks.

Well for starters my case can only hold a max of 10 drives. The reason for the 2 vdevs may sound silly but I want to be able to upgrade the zpool faster. I would only have to get 5 drives instead of 10 to upgade the zpool. Then get the remaining 5 drives later. However, I forgot that I will have 4 parity drives with that config. Looks like I will have to rethink it lol. Going RAIDZ3 with all 10 drives seems like my best option at this point.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I forgot that I will have 4 parity drives with that config. Looks like I will have to rethink it

There's nothing wrong with devoting 40% of your storage to redundancy, just like there's nothing wrong with devoting 50% of it to redundancy (as I do). Your point about easier expansion, by replacing only 5 of 10 drives, is completely valid. There's also nothing wrong with doing something in-between, such as a 6, 7, or 8-drive RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 pool. The disadvantage of the latter is that you'd have to rebuild your pool, where adding a 5-drive vdev to your current setup wouldn't require that. Don't abandon your initial plan yet!

 

[Haysden Smart]

Breeze247, My setup is not what many people consider kosher as I have installed 8 WD Red drives in a 2x4x2TB ZFS1 Array.

Although it may not be Kosher, "IT WORKS". Plus to re configure to ZFS2 and restore from my lats backup of over 5TB of data would literally take days. It took 5 days to recover from my online backup.

Not complaining about the extremely well knowleged ZFS guys on this forum, merely pointing out that there is more than 1 way too skin a cat however they work.