Is FreeNAS for me? One question stands in the way

[tundelas]

Hi All,

FreeNAS newbie here. I'm looking for a RAID solution to my future home server and am wondering if FreeNAS is what I'm looking for but my question is around hardware failure.

I'm planning on 8 x 3TB drives into a newly built rig, with a small SSD drive to install FreeNAS on. After setting up RAID on some of those drives, suppose down the road the motherboard seizes to work, or the SSD drive no longer boots up. What happens to my RAID? Is it possible for me to take those eight 3TB drives into a completely different rig and still be able to restore the RAID and access my files?

 

[bollar]

Assuming you have setup the array as ZFS, then the answer is almost certainly yes, you can load the disks into a new system with any OS that supports the version of ZFS that is set on the array. This is one of the best parts of ZFS.

However, remember that a NAS is not a backup, and something catastrophic could happen to the box that also damages the disks.

 

[tundelas]

Is FreeNAS what creates the RAID arrays? (thus making the ZFS a "software raid") Or is that done at the hardware level with those 8 HDDs connected to some SAS card?

Also, all 8 drives would be SATA 3.0Gb/s. Since motherboards do not come with 8 SATA slots, would the workaround for this be just a regular PCIe non-raid expansion card? (pls send newegg link if you can)

THanks.

 

[survive]

Hi tundelas,

FreeNAS uses zfs which is both a volume manager & a filesystem, which means you use it to create your storage pool from your (8 X 3TB) disks as well as being the actual file system. You can also use a hardware RAID card to make the storage pool and then run zfs on that as the file system (this isn't an ideal solution....zfs works best when it has full control of the drives & there is the added expense of buying a hardware RAID controller card).

Before you go much further I would urge you to take a look at this post:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...explaining-VDev-zpool-ZIL-and-L2ARC-for-noobs!

This for more background & details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs

and if you really want to get up in the guts watch these:

https://blogs.oracle.com/video/entry/becoming_a_zfs_ninja

8 drives is kind of a pain to do honestly....since there aren't 8 SATA ports native to the motherboard (AMD 75 & 85 chipsets do have 8) you need to get an add-on card and, to be blunt, most 2 port cards are kind of crap. Many users opt to instead use a controller like the IBM M1015 (a re-badged LSI 9220) that can be found on ebay for ~$75.00.

-Will

 

[tundelas]

Hi tundelas,

FreeNAS uses zfs which is both a volume manager & a filesystem, which means you use it to create your storage pool from your (8 X 3TB) disks as well as being the actual file system. You can also use a hardware RAID card to make the storage pool and then run zfs on that as the file system (this isn't an ideal solution....zfs works best when it has full control of the drives & there is the added expense of buying a hardware RAID controller card).

Before you go much further I would urge you to take a look at this post:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...explaining-VDev-zpool-ZIL-and-L2ARC-for-noobs!

This for more background & details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs

and if you really want to get up in the guts watch these:

https://blogs.oracle.com/video/entry/becoming_a_zfs_ninja

8 drives is kind of a pain to do honestly....since there aren't 8 SATA ports native to the motherboard (AMD 75 & 85 chipsets do have 8) you need to get an add-on card and, to be blunt, most 2 port cards are kind of crap. Many users opt to instead use a controller like the IBM M1015 (a re-badged LSI 9220) that can be found on ebay for ~$75.00.

-Will

Excellent info. Thank you Will and bollar

 

[toddos]

Nobody's said it yet, but don't install FreeNAS on that SSD. It's designed to work off of a USB stick and loads itself in RAM upon boot, so you get no benefit from running it on an SSD (and lose access to the remaining space on the SSD). Just put it on a USB stick like intended.

 

[tingo]

Another point: once you have your FreeNAS set up the way you want it, make a backup of the configuration (easily done from the gui) and store it somewhere safe. This ensures that when that usb stick you installed FreeNAS on fails, you can write the image to a new usb stick, restore the configuration, and you are back in business again.

 

[tundelas]

Nobody's said it yet, but don't install FreeNAS on that SSD. It's designed to work off of a USB stick and loads itself in RAM upon boot, so you get no benefit from running it on an SSD (and lose access to the remaining space on the SSD). Just put it on a USB stick like intended.

hmm, thanks! I was thinking the SSD would help things chug along faster, but if there's no added benefit I'll go with small USB stick. :)

 

[tundelas]

Another point: once you have your FreeNAS set up the way you want it, make a backup of the configuration (easily done from the gui) and store it somewhere safe. This ensures that when that usb stick you installed FreeNAS on fails, you can write the image to a new usb stick, restore the configuration, and you are back in business again.

That's great for when the USB drive goes out. For a RAID-Z1 or RAID-Z2, does the parity information get stored on the hard drives? If I had to move those drives to a different server (with FreeNAS installed), would I still be back in business?

 

[Stephens]

The parity information is stored on the drives. You could, indeed, move the whole pool to another machine if necessary.