Is Freenas the right choice for me?

[NiKa]

My hellos to all of you.. :)

I ve been a Windows user since ever..
My NAS consists of an Adaptec 71605h and about 14 drives (2tb-4tb)..
all my disks are NTFS.. (ofc - windows)

I use my server to stream media to my XBMC player (Photos, videos, etc)..
Using NFS Server ...

also i use Stablebit Drive Pool in order all my disks to be seen as one..

I have no experience with linux.. and i really dont like raid (dont shoot me please :) )..

What i really like would be an OS with minimal resources to provide me:
a) NFS
b) NTFS combatible? (i read that Freenas uses ZFS - so if possible to convert all my drives to ZFS)
c) DrivePool - Drive Bender ability (all drives to be seen as one)
d) JBOD... (no raid if possible please)..
e) Easy to setup - use

Is Freenas to deliver all the above?
or should i look for something else? - if there is an alternative ?

Thank you for your time
Nicolas

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS can certainly provide NFS services, and ZFS makes it trivial to combine all your drives into a single pool (that's its default, and preferred, mode of operation). However, the way that ZFS does that is to stripe all the drives together, similar to a RAID0 configuration. This means that when (not if) a single drive fails, your entire pool is destroyed. You can mitigate this by creating multiple pools (3 disks in one pool, 3 more disks in another pool, etc.); in this case, loss of a disk will still destroy all the data in its pool, but that wouldn't be all of your data system-wide. Of course, that's contrary to your goal of all the storage being in a single pool. What do you have against RAID? Yes, you'll lose some capacity, but you'll gain redundancy and data protection in proportion to the capacity loss.

FreeNAS is not designed to be a "minimal resources" type of OS. ZFS requires 8 GB of RAM as a minimum, and as your capacity increases, a rule of thumb is 1 GB of RAM per TB of pool capacity.

There's no way in FreeNAS (or otherwise that I know of) to convert an NTFS volume to a ZFS volume while preserving the data. Converting the drives is simple enough, of course--just reformat them. But if you want to preserve your data, you'll need to be able to create a ZFS pool on empty drives and then copy your data to it. FreeNAS does include support for reading NTFS volumes, though I understand it's not completely reliable.

As to ease of setup and use, that's pretty subjective. You don't need to know any Linux to do it, as FreeNAS runs on FreeBSD, not Linux. And if all you want to do is have a storage pool for your media files, it should be pretty simple to manage. The manual is pretty good--take a read and see what you think.

 

[Ericloewe]

FreeNAS can certainly provide NFS services, and ZFS makes it trivial to combine all your drives into a single pool (that's its default, and preferred, mode of operation). However, the way that ZFS does that is to stripe all the drives together, similar to a RAID0 configuration. This means that when (not if) a single drive fails, your entire pool is destroyed. You can mitigate this by creating multiple pools (3 disks in one pool, 3 more disks in another pool, etc.); in this case, loss of a disk will still destroy all the data in its pool, but that wouldn't be all of your data system-wide. Of course, that's contrary to your goal of all the storage being in a single pool. What do you have against RAID? Yes, you'll lose some capacity, but you'll gain redundancy and data protection in proportion to the capacity loss.

FreeNAS is not designed to be a "minimal resources" type of OS. ZFS requires 8 GB of RAM as a minimum, and as your capacity increases, a rule of thumb is 1 GB of RAM per TB of pool capacity.

There's no way in FreeNAS (or otherwise that I know of) to convert an NTFS volume to a ZFS volume while preserving the data. Converting the drives is simple enough, of course--just reformat them. But if you want to preserve your data, you'll need to be able to create a ZFS pool on empty drives and then copy your data to it. FreeNAS does include support for reading NTFS volumes, though I understand it's not completely reliable.

As to ease of setup and use, that's pretty subjective. You don't need to know any Linux to do it, as FreeNAS runs on FreeBSD, not Linux. And if all you want to do is have a storage pool for your media files, it should be pretty simple to manage. The manual is pretty good--take a read and see what you think.

NTFS read support is ok, it's the write support that's problematic at times. Still, ideally you'll want to transfer the data over the network, to be on the safe side.

Be sure to read the forum stickies as well, NiKa!

 

[NiKa]

So...
there is no way to keep JBOD drives - all in one pool - ZFS?
(what i mean is if one drive fails, the other drives would still work - but i want to see all of them as one. (just like drive pool, drive bender do))...

 

[Ericloewe]

So...
there is no way to keep JBOD drives - all in one pool - ZFS?
(what i mean is if one drive fails, the other drives would still work - but i want to see all of them as one. (just like drive pool, drive bender do))...

No. One pool == the vdevs are striped.

 

[NiKa]

Hmm...

Thank you all for the answers...

 

[danb35]

I didn't see a reply--what do you have against RAID?

 

[cyberjock]

You can always do vdevs with redundancy.. RAIDZ2.. etc.

 

[NiKa]

will have to study a bit.... (redundancy )..

lost many files with raid..
feel safer with jbod discs .... - never lost a file.. maybe lucky, maybe good hard drives.. who knows... :)

 

[danb35]

Yes, but NiKa says "i really dont like raid," for unspecified reasons. One thing that would definitely be an issue, though, is that the disks aren't all the same size. A RAIDZ2 vdev of his 14 drives would thus result in (14 - 2) * 2 TB ~= 24 TB of capacity, and the extra capacity on any of the 4 TB drives would be wasted. The drives could be split into separate vdevs, of course (which would likely be safer anyway), which would recover that capacity, but would lose more capacity to parity.

 

[Ericloewe]

will have to study a bit.... (redundancy )..

lost many files with raid..
feel safer with jbod discs .... - never lost a file.. maybe lucky, maybe good hard drives.. who knows... :)

That's like saying you were once involved in an airplane crash with some third-world airline and now you feel safer driving.

Stick with RAIDZ (ideally RAIDZ2 or even 3 if you're extra-paranoid, RAIDZ1 is to be avoided) and backups if you value your data. JBOD isn't for valuable data.

 

[danb35]

NiKa, with JBOD as you describe it, when (not if) a drive fails, you'll lose at least the data that was stored on that drive, unless you have a backup. ZFS RAID is different, in significant but esoteric ways, from traditional RAID, and it does a good job of protecting your data if it's configured properly. Of course, to give you that redundancy, it takes capacity, and to configure it optimally takes some planning.

You say your setup has a mix of drive sizes--how many of which capacities? For optimal use of your capacity, you'd want to have separate RAIDZ groups for each disk capacity. So, if you had 6 x 2 TB drives, and 8 x 4 TB drives, you might set up one RAIDZ2 group (called a vdev) for the 6 x 2 TB drives (which would have a capacity of (6 - 2) * 2 ~= 8 TB, and would tolerate the failure of up to two disks), and a second RAIDZ2 vdev for the 8 x 4 TB drives (which would have a capacity of (8 - 2) * 4 ~= 24 TB). These RAIDZ2 vdevs would then combine into a single pool with an overall net capacity of about 32 TB. Your storage pool would tolerate the loss of up to four disks (two from each vdev) without data loss. However, if three disks failed from either vdev, your entire pool would fail and your data would be unrecoverable.

cyberjock has a good PowerPoint presentation explaining the basics of ZFS; it's linked in his signature (where it says "Read my guide!"). I'd suggest you read that for some background info on how ZFS works and how it protects your data.

 

[NiKa]

cyberjock has a good PowerPoint presentation explaining the basics of ZFS; it's linked in his signature (where it says "Read my guide!"). I'd suggest you read that for some background info on how ZFS works and how it protects your data.

Thank you will start from there and return with more questions... :D

 

[danb35]

Good call. I'd like to touch on hardware requirements. As I mentioned up-thread, 8 GB of RAM is the minimum, and with the capacity you have, 16 GB is probably a better call. It's strongly encouraged to use ECC RAM, which means (obviously) that the RAM itself must be ECC, and also that your CPU and motherboard must support ECC. Using non-ECC memory can lead to data corruption with ZFS. In short, plan on using server-grade hardware for FreeNAS--there are sticky threads discussing hardware recommendations, the importance of ECC memory, etc--take a look through them. By doing so, you may be able to avoid buying hardware that is sub-optimal, or may even not work at all.