Is FreeNAS an overkill for my need?

[mnmlisme]

Hi,

Been reading about FreeNAS and its ZFS and ECC advantages. Please help me decide if I should build a FreeNAS for my need or is there an alternative solution.

A little background: I live in Indonesia, and a ZFS supporting motherboard is non-existent here, so if I were to build one, definitely have to buy the motherboard from Amazon. I'm thinking of building a FreeNAS for backup center for my home. Family photos and videos, important work documents, etc. No media streaming at all. Pure for backing up purpose. I want a NAS that's reliable and easy to recover.

Question is, is FreeNAS an overkill for my need? It supports ZFS but if the motherboard fails, can I access my disk using other OS while waiting replacement to come?
What are the advantages of using FreeNAS (for my need) compared to getting retail NAS products such as WD or QNAP? They're easier to purchase as well here.

That's all for now

 

[danb35]

It supports ZSF but if the motherboard fails, can I access my disk using other OS while waiting replacement to come?

If the motherboard fails, you can plug your disk(s) and boot device into any other reasonable computer, and have your FreeNAS there. Or you can plug the disk(s) alone into a computer running MacOSX, Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana/OmniOS and read them there. To the best of my knowledge, though, there's no Windows support for ZFS, so you wouldn't be able to plug your disk(s) into a Windows computer and read them.

Advantages of FreeNAS? Likely several, but there are a couple of major ones that come to mind:

• It will run on reasonable (at least 8 GB RAM) commodity PC hardware, though server-grade hardware with support for ECC RAM is strongly encouraged. You aren't stuck with the hardware offerings of any particular vendor.
• It uses ZFS, which will take better care of your data than pretty much any other filesystem if you configure it sensibly.

At the lower end, there are a few inexpensive pre-built servers on the market, at least in the U.S. Recommendations in the past have been the Dell T20 and Lenovo TS140, but I think I've seen that the Dell model may have been superseded by the T30. These have been available as low as US$200, needing only to add some RAM and whatever disk(s) you want to use.

 

[mnmlisme]

thank you for your reply.

I'm in the middle of getting used to Mint, and there's my media streamer, raspberrypi with openmediavault, so I guess I'm safe on the Linux side, as long I can read the disk. So that's one issue gone.

I'm considering getting the SuperMicro with built in processor if I were to build a FreeNAS. $250ish I think on Amazon. ZFS is really one of the strong consideration point. What does it mean by corruption free? Does using ZFS guarantee that my data won't be corrupted?

Checked for Dell T20 and Lenovo TS140 locally, but the cheapest is around $800-900 with Xeon E3! that's way over $200, or were your suggestion for something else?

 

[danb35]

Checked for Dell T20 and Lenovo TS140 locally, but the cheapest is around $800-900 with Xeon E3!

You don't need a Xeon for any of the workload you're talking about, a Pentium G-series would be plenty. But prices vary significantly, both with time and location. In the US, within the past few years, the systems I mentioned have been pretty inexpensive options, suitable for a FreeNAS box. I haven't been keeping up too closely lately, so there may be newer options.

Edit: Right now, in the US, the Dell T30 starts at US$350 with a Pentium G4400, 4 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk. You'd want to add at least 4 GB more RAM, but don't pay the ridiculous price Dell charges for it; get it from crucial.com or some other reliable source. For another US$200, you can get an E3-1225 and 8 GB of RAM, but the E3 shouldn't be necessary for you, and the extra RAM will be cheaper elsewhere.

Does using ZFS guarantee that my data won't be corrupted?

At a minimum, it guarantees that your data won't be corrupted without your knowing about it. If you only have a single disk in your system, ZFS won't prevent disk failure, and it won't prevent bit rot--but in the latter case, it will at least warn about it. If you have multiple disks in a redundant arrangement, data corruption will be corrected within the limits of the redundancy.

 

[mnmlisme]

You don't need a Xeon for any of the workload you're talking about, a Pentium G-series would be plenty. But prices vary significantly, both with time and location. In the US, within the past few years, the systems I mentioned have been pretty inexpensive options, suitable for a FreeNAS box. I haven't been keeping up too closely lately, so there may be newer options.

Edit: Right now, in the US, the Dell T30 starts at US$350 with a Pentium G4400, 4 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk. You'd want to add at least 4 GB more RAM, but don't pay the ridiculous price Dell charges for it; get it from crucial.com or some other reliable source. For another US$200, you can get an E3-1225 and 8 GB of RAM, but the E3 shouldn't be necessary for you, and the extra RAM will be cheaper elsewhere.


At a minimum, it guarantees that your data won't be corrupted without your knowing about it. If you only have a single disk in your system, ZFS won't prevent disk failure, and it won't prevent bit rot--but in the latter case, it will at least warn about it. If you have multiple disks in a redundant arrangement, data corruption will be corrected within the limits of the redundancy.

so with the server grade equipment, I can expect FreeNAS to be one of the most reliable backup I have, right? I mean, I still do the 3-2-1 backup scenario, but I'm expecting the FreeNAS to be the most reliable one, with its ZFS and all. And in case of equipment failure, I can just plug the disk in my other Linux and access my files. Nice.

Now, as for disk redundancy, which arrangement should I go for? For my need, I was thinking a simple disk mirroring, so, RAID1 would be sufficient? I don't plan to use a lot of storage since I don't need to preserve my media. I'm thinking 3TB is plenty for now and distant future. so 2x3TB?

 

[danb35]

A mirrored pair of disks is a perfectly valid configuration, and should do a good job of protecting your data. If you find you need more storage in the future, you can easily add another pair of disks to the pool, expanding your capacity while retaining redundancy.

 

[mnmlisme]

A mirrored pair of disks is a perfectly valid configuration, and should do a good job of protecting your data. If you find you need more storage in the future, you can easily add another pair of disks to the pool, expanding your capacity while retaining redundancy.

super! I think I got what I need for now. Will hunt for parts. I just wished there were a cheaper T140 alternative here so I don't need to go to Amazon, importing the parts would be quite expensive too.