I just want to say that this is an amazing forum with an incredible wealth of knowledge. I think I have learned what to do, and more importantly what not to do when building a FreeNAS file server. I really wish I had found this forum years ago as it would have greatly simplified things and prevented my current predicament. So to cut a long story short my current server using Windows Server 2003 is dead in the water, or at least I am choosing it to be. The motherboard has decided that it likes to kill hard drives while doing larger file transfers, so before it kills any more drives I have shut it down. Thankfully I have some backups and have not lost anything significant, I did not use RAID when building my server so I have only lost one drive.
As a side note RAID gives me the willies, at the time of building my last server it was not in the budget to buy enterprise grade drives, a RAID controller, and the motherboard/processor required to run RAID. (without losing all your data on the first rebuild) Instead I built a server using my old gaming motherboard and a stack of 9 3TB green drives. I only used 4 drives for data storage and the rest were used for backups, every drive had a backup drive, except for the one that holds my personal data, it has two. I periodically manually backed up my media to the respective drive and used rsync to back up my personal data nightly and weekly. This monstrosity was created because I figured I could lose at most the data on one drive. After having the drive that holds my movies die twice I have decided it is time to improve my system.
On to the real reason why I am here, I am hoping that you guys can review my intentions for building my new server with FreeNAS and point out any critical mistakes that I might be about to make before they happen. I intend on using the following hardware.
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F
Processor: Intel E3-1230 v3
Ram: 32 GB of un-buffered ECC memory from the list of tested memory for this motherboard, likely Samsung M391B1G73QH0-YK0
RAID card: One IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller
Power Supply: Seasonic SS-660XP2 ATX 12V/EPS
I plan on reusing my current Antec 1200 case as well as most of my hard drives. I have 7 Western Digital 3TB green drives that I can pull from my old server; I plan on purchasing another 2 brand new 3TB green drives to bring the total for this build to 9. I would be running them in RAIDZ3 to provide for the best possible fault reliability. This does not follow the recommended number of drives for RAIDZ3 but according to Cyberjock’s slide show this should not matter as I will mostly be using this as a media server. I will also be using this to store various personal things for my family such as photos and word documents.
I understand that it is important to flash the M1015 card as well as the onboard LSI 2308 into IT mode. Additionally I will be using wdidle to adjust the park time for the green drives. Can anyone advise what time I should be increasing this to, I understand that the initial time is 8 seconds and that this is not nearly long enough.
I have two Western Digital velociraptor 150 or 160 gb drives (I don’t remember what the actual size is). They are currently being used for the OS in my old server under RAID1. These drives were pulled from a pair of Dell T5500 work stations that I bought used. I am wondering if I should set one or both of these drives up as a ZIL. The only reason why I ask is that I have them and I currently have no other use for them.
After the build but before I move my data onto the FreeNAS I intend on running a memtest, I have not read up on these yet so I am unsure of exactly why they are required. I think it is something to do with testing the ram under high load to find any faults. Is there any other test that I should be doing to the hardware? I had thought about removing a drive and replacing it with a new drive to see how the rebuild process works. Is this a good idea, or am I asking for problems? The main reason why I want to do this is I will be leaving for school in September and I will be spending the winter half way across the country. I was hoping to take my oldest server (not the one that is dead, the dead one was built to replace this one) with me as I enjoy having it while at school. This server however contains some of my backups, so it would become difficult to transfer the files onto the new FreeNAS should something happen after I leave for school.
It goes without saying that I will be backing up my irreplaceable data to a location outside of the Zpool. I intend on having a backup on a drive in another computer in my house. At this point I will manage my off site backup by having a copy stored on my oldest server that I will be taking to school with me. I call this server the frankenserver because it is an abomination created from an old dell optiplex gx260 and leftovers, it is literally held together with zip ties and super glue. That being said it has been running for 5 years without a single problem. I have periodically replaced the drives to increase the storage space but I have never lost one, it has never crashed and has always worked perfectly since they day I built it. I think a large part of this is because of the 6 or so extra fans I have installed by hacking large holes through the case.
Thanks again for all the help you guys have provided.
As a side note RAID gives me the willies, at the time of building my last server it was not in the budget to buy enterprise grade drives, a RAID controller, and the motherboard/processor required to run RAID. (without losing all your data on the first rebuild) Instead I built a server using my old gaming motherboard and a stack of 9 3TB green drives. I only used 4 drives for data storage and the rest were used for backups, every drive had a backup drive, except for the one that holds my personal data, it has two. I periodically manually backed up my media to the respective drive and used rsync to back up my personal data nightly and weekly. This monstrosity was created because I figured I could lose at most the data on one drive. After having the drive that holds my movies die twice I have decided it is time to improve my system.
On to the real reason why I am here, I am hoping that you guys can review my intentions for building my new server with FreeNAS and point out any critical mistakes that I might be about to make before they happen. I intend on using the following hardware.
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F
Processor: Intel E3-1230 v3
Ram: 32 GB of un-buffered ECC memory from the list of tested memory for this motherboard, likely Samsung M391B1G73QH0-YK0
RAID card: One IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller
Power Supply: Seasonic SS-660XP2 ATX 12V/EPS
I plan on reusing my current Antec 1200 case as well as most of my hard drives. I have 7 Western Digital 3TB green drives that I can pull from my old server; I plan on purchasing another 2 brand new 3TB green drives to bring the total for this build to 9. I would be running them in RAIDZ3 to provide for the best possible fault reliability. This does not follow the recommended number of drives for RAIDZ3 but according to Cyberjock’s slide show this should not matter as I will mostly be using this as a media server. I will also be using this to store various personal things for my family such as photos and word documents.
I understand that it is important to flash the M1015 card as well as the onboard LSI 2308 into IT mode. Additionally I will be using wdidle to adjust the park time for the green drives. Can anyone advise what time I should be increasing this to, I understand that the initial time is 8 seconds and that this is not nearly long enough.
I have two Western Digital velociraptor 150 or 160 gb drives (I don’t remember what the actual size is). They are currently being used for the OS in my old server under RAID1. These drives were pulled from a pair of Dell T5500 work stations that I bought used. I am wondering if I should set one or both of these drives up as a ZIL. The only reason why I ask is that I have them and I currently have no other use for them.
After the build but before I move my data onto the FreeNAS I intend on running a memtest, I have not read up on these yet so I am unsure of exactly why they are required. I think it is something to do with testing the ram under high load to find any faults. Is there any other test that I should be doing to the hardware? I had thought about removing a drive and replacing it with a new drive to see how the rebuild process works. Is this a good idea, or am I asking for problems? The main reason why I want to do this is I will be leaving for school in September and I will be spending the winter half way across the country. I was hoping to take my oldest server (not the one that is dead, the dead one was built to replace this one) with me as I enjoy having it while at school. This server however contains some of my backups, so it would become difficult to transfer the files onto the new FreeNAS should something happen after I leave for school.
It goes without saying that I will be backing up my irreplaceable data to a location outside of the Zpool. I intend on having a backup on a drive in another computer in my house. At this point I will manage my off site backup by having a copy stored on my oldest server that I will be taking to school with me. I call this server the frankenserver because it is an abomination created from an old dell optiplex gx260 and leftovers, it is literally held together with zip ties and super glue. That being said it has been running for 5 years without a single problem. I have periodically replaced the drives to increase the storage space but I have never lost one, it has never crashed and has always worked perfectly since they day I built it. I think a large part of this is because of the 6 or so extra fans I have installed by hacking large holes through the case.
Thanks again for all the help you guys have provided.
