Last Minute Setup Help

[thatflashcat]

For a bit of context I just built a Freenas system and just installed the latest version of Freenas (I think it's the December 5th release, so not technically latest I guess). The specs are as follows in case they are needed:

CPU: Intel Xeon 2650 V2
Motherboard: Supermicro X9 SRL-F
RAM: 64 gb ddr3 ECC 1333Mhz
Drive Controller: LSI H220
Drives: 6x Seagate Enterprise 4TB 7200 RPM (I forget the model)

I'm confident that I could set everything up but I'd like some input on "best" practice.

Users and groups: I'm planning to create a group and add a couple of users to own different datasets.

Pool, volume, and dataset: One pool with multiple datasets for different types of data. Should I make one top level dataset and add others within it?

Shares: One per dataset.

Snapshots: No snapshots on the dataset for windows backups, I'm trying to decide how often to do it for regular data. For documents that are small and often accessed, a short interval would make sense but there is no need to make snapshots for long term data storage (or at least not many).

I took a look at this and like the ideas behind it: https://b3n.org/zfs-hierarchy/

Basically I'm just looking for input because I'm paranoid about doing this right. :P

 

[Ericloewe]

Should I make one top level dataset and add others within it?

You don't really have a choice on that one, as any ZFS pool has a top-level dataset.

Snapshots: No snapshots on the dataset for windows backups

Why? If nothing changes, it's only a handful of KB of metadata per snapshot.

I'm trying to decide how often to do it for regular data. For documents that are small and often accessed, a short interval would make sense but there is no need to make snapshots for long term data storage (or at least not many).

Generally, you want several tasks: Frequent but short lived, infrequent but long-lived and however many step in between you'd like.

 

[thatflashcat]

You don't really have a choice on that one, as any ZFS pool has a top-level dataset.

I'm just building my pool now so I'll check that out. Edit: I made my RAID-Z2 pool and it created a dataset of the same name. Looks good. Is there any reason not to set the default share type to windows?

Why? If nothing changes, it's only a handful of KB of metadata per snapshot.

Fair enough, but my thought was that snapshots wouldn't make much sense since the image backups already are snapshots in a sense.

Generally, you want several tasks: Frequent but short lived, infrequent but long-lived and however many step in between you'd like.

All on the same dataset?

 

[thatflashcat]

This is interesting. I don't remember Freenas creating so many datasets before by default...

 

[Ericloewe]

Is there any reason not to set the default share type to windows?

On the top-level dataset? Definitely do not do that, or you'll break several things.

All on the same dataset?

Yes.

 

[thatflashcat]

On the top-level dataset? Definitely do not do that, or you'll break several things.


Yes.

Oh, I set it to windows and then changed it back because I thought better of it. Do I need to rebuild the entire pool now? :p Edit: I can do that pretty easily if it will prevent any issues. I haven't been able to find what changing the default share type does anyway.

 

[Ericloewe]

You should be fine recursively setting the aclmode on all datasets to passthrough.

The aclmode is what the permissions option actually changes. Unix uses passthrough, Windows restricted.

 

[thatflashcat]

You should be fine recursively setting the aclmode on all datasets to passthrough.

The aclmode is what the permissions option actually changes. Unix uses passthrough, Windows restricted.

But is it an issue for the dataset to have been switched to the restricted windows default even for a few minutes?

 

[Ericloewe]

I'd expect not.

 

[thatflashcat]

I'd expect not.

I wouldn't either but I don't want to have broken something just before copying data over. :p At any rate I'll start setting up my datasets. I added another dataset off of the top-level dataset to hold further sub datasets, leaving the iocage one untouched.

Edit:
Here we are:

Is the top-level dataset really using 499 mb for metadata?

 

[Ericloewe]

What's the output of zfs list?

 

[thatflashcat]

Code:

% zfs list
NAME                                                     USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
freenas-boot                                             762M   107G    64K  none
freenas-boot/ROOT                                        762M   107G    29K  none
freenas-boot/ROOT/Initial-Install                          1K   107G   760M  legacy
freenas-boot/ROOT/default                                762M   107G   760M  legacy
tank1                                                    500M  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1
tank1/.system                                            492M  14.0T   472M  legacy
tank1/.system/configs-4a7da323489644858925be23483a2e70   320K  14.0T   320K  legacy
tank1/.system/cores                                      176K  14.0T   176K  legacy
tank1/.system/rrd-4a7da323489644858925be23483a2e70      17.8M  14.0T  17.8M  legacy
tank1/.system/samba4                                     480K  14.0T   480K  legacy
tank1/.system/syslog-4a7da323489644858925be23483a2e70    440K  14.0T   440K  legacy
tank1/.system/webui                                      176K  14.0T   176K  legacy
tank1/data                                               895K  14.0T   192K  /mnt/tank1/data
tank1/data/files                                         176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/data/files
tank1/data/mediaarchive                                  176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/data/mediaarchive
tank1/data/projects                                      176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/data/projects
tank1/data/windowsbackup                                 176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/data/windowsbackup
tank1/iocage                                            4.91M  14.0T  3.88M  /mnt/tank1/iocage
tank1/iocage/download                                    176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/iocage/download
tank1/iocage/images                                      176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/iocage/images
tank1/iocage/jails                                       176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/iocage/jails
tank1/iocage/log                                         176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/iocage/log
tank1/iocage/releases                                    176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/iocage/releases
tank1/iocage/templates                                   176K  14.0T   176K  /mnt/tank1/iocage/templates

 

[Ericloewe]

492 MB on the system dataset. Hmm, I just noticed that mine are 620ish MB, with years of logs and such. I wonder what takes up so much space, but I don't have the time to investigate it now.

 

[thatflashcat]

492 MB on the system dataset. Hmm, I just noticed that mine are 620ish MB, with years of logs and such. I wonder what takes up so much space, but I don't have the time to investigate it now.

As long as it isn't indicative of a serious underlying issue I don't care, I was only curious.

 

[danb35]

I wonder what takes up so much space

Config backups in your case, most likely. They're taken daily and never pruned.

 

[thatflashcat]

Config backups in your case, most likely. They're taken daily and never pruned.

I installed Freenas yesterday though...

 

[danb35]

I installed Freenas yesterday though...

...which is why I wrote "in your case" to @Ericloewe. What's the output of ls -lh /var/db/system on your system?

 

[thatflashcat]

...which is why I wrote "in your case" to @Ericloewe. What's the output of ls -lh /var/db/system on your system?

lol my bad, I thought you had quoted me. :P

Code:

ls -lh /var/db/system
total 69
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     3B Dec 28 03:45 configs-4a7da323489644858925be23483a2e70
drwxrwxr-x  2 root  wheel     2B Dec 27 20:47 cores
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     0B Dec 27 20:47 nfs-stablerestart
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     0B Dec 27 20:47 nfs-stablerestart.bak
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     4B Dec 27 20:47 rrd-4a7da323489644858925be23483a2e70
drwxr-xr-x  4 root  wheel    14B Dec 28 14:17 samba4
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     3B Dec 27 20:47 syslog-4a7da323489644858925be23483a2e70
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel    11B Dec 28 04:03 update
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel     2B Dec 27 20:47 webui

 

[danb35]

...and what about ls -lh /var/db/system/update?

 

[thatflashcat]

...and what about ls -lh /var/db/system/update?

Code:

total 483276
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   437M Dec 28 04:03 base-os-11.2-RELEASE-U1-ecf80b60107771baacc6dce10bfe9ab6.tgz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    48K Dec 28 04:03 ChangeLog.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   5.9M Dec 28 04:03 freebsd-pkgdb-11.2-RELEASE-U1-ecf80b60107771baacc6dce10bfe9ab6.tgz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    57K Dec 28 04:03 freenas-pkg-tools-11.2-RELEASE-U1-ecf80b60107771baacc6dce10bfe9ab6.tgz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    29M Dec 28 04:03 FreeNASUI-11.2-RELEASE-U1-ecf80b60107771baacc6dce10bfe9ab6.tgz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   1.9K Dec 28 04:02 MANIFEST
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    32B Dec 28 04:03 SEQUENCE
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     7B Dec 28 04:03 SERVER
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   185B Dec 28 04:02 ValidateUpdate

Ah so it downloaded the latest version of Freenas? That would explain the space usage.