Highpoint Hardware Raid5 in Freenas 9.1.1 or ZFS

[cooper83]

This is my first time building a NAS and working with raid or freenas so please be gentle!

Here's my specs:
Intel core quad cpu Q6700 @ 2.66ghz w/ 8GB of ram
Highpoint Rocketraid 2720SGL PCI-E Sata/SAS controller with 8 ports
Supermicro superchassis CSE-743T-665B 4U Server Case
Starting with 3 X 3TB Seagate 7200 Barracuda drives..adding in 5 more (currently full..need to add to array first, clean and then add)
Running Freenas x64 9.1.1

My goal:
A dedicated NAS running Freenas with 3 x 3tb drives that I can add additional drives to. (eventually hosting an 8 x 3tb array and a 4 x 2tb array) I have a variety of full 2 and 3tb drives. I would like to move their data into the initial 3 x 3tb raid one by one, clean them, and then add the drive for additional storage in preparation to add the data from the next one. I'll keep doing this until all 8 ports on the hardware card are used with 3tb drives, and then will use the Freenas to create another array for the 2tb drives (I put a 4 hot swap bay into the space on my tower to convert it to a 12 hot swap setup instead of just 8) I'm thinking RAID5 for the 3tb array because I would like to retain as much space as possible and most of the data is just movies and tv shows. I'll use a raid 10 for the 2tb drives and fill it with music, pictures and more sensitive data.

Where I am:
I know I can use FreeNAS to create a ZFS array for the 3tb drives but after reading hours worth of information here, I was under the impression it would be better to have my hardware card do the work for me instead of just acting as a way to connect the drives to the motherboard. Based on that assumption (which I could be dead wrong about), I booted the system into the bios for the raid card, and tried to initialize the raid. I waited about 12 hours and it was still showing as not initialized. I then exited and booted into Freenas X64 9.1.1 and via the webgui I could see the drives but they were all separate (not showing as one volume which I imagined they would..again probably dead wrong)

I read online that creating the array in the foreground would take a lot less time, but no option to do so in the bios for the card, so I installed a disc I had with windows7 on it, booted into the OS, and used the highpoint web gui to initialize the raid5 in the foreground. Waited 7 hours and it worked. Then gave the array a drive letter in windows drive management and formatted for use. Then shut down, removed windows drive and booted back into freenas but it still is just showing the 3 drives separately.

How can I create a RAID5 with the card that Freenas will see, or do I even need to? If I make a ZFS array in Freenas, is there a way to have the highpoint card do the work? What's the best way to proceed? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[pirateghost]

You have a lot of reading to do.

Hardware raid is not recommended for use with freenas, you can't dynamically expand the vdev after you configure it, and it would appear your raid card is a 'fake'raid which is why it's passing through the individual drives. Is it on the FreeBSD supported hardware list?

Please review the documentation before going any further.

 

[cyberjock]

Then, read up on http://forums.freenas.org/threads/highpoint-controller-info.8217/. You should take the time to verify you have SMART info and testing available. Last time I read up on your controller it won't do it. If you can't do SMART monitoring and testing that means you should find yourself another controller to use. Someone in the IRC has been fighting the whole "can't use SMART to diagnose a bad disk" for 6 days now and he was forced to basically backup his entire pool, run tests on all the drives on another machine to try to find the bad one, then rebuild and restore the array. Not something for the faint at heart.

But as pirateghost says, you need to sit down and read the manual cover-to-cover. It will tell you everything you need to know regarding hardware and configuring your system. Also feel free to read my presentation as its a good primer for stuff that people do right and wrong regularly with FreeNAS builds.

Your hardware needs work. 8GB of RAM is not going to cut it if you plan to have a bunch of 3TB drives in a pool. As the manual explains, 8GB of RAM is the minimum recommended for ZFS. So you are potentially looking at a new motherboard, processor, RAM, and RAID card.

Good luck!

Before you go buying new hardware, read the stickies. Read every sticky you can find in this forum. 90% of them are written by the mods because of the sweat and tears of prior users constantly losing data permanently has motivated us to try to help out newbies from doing stupid things.