looking for advice and solution for my home FreeNAS and backup system

[WalterWampe]

Hello pros out there,

as a beginner I come to you with a question about usability, security and because I am looking to the best solution.
I spend the last weeks gathering information and reading manuals and threads and now I am stuck with my initial concept and am not sure whether I should just let go and go for a better solution.

I had the idea of getting my own NAS after having bought my 10th or so external HDD to save my photos and gopro videos on.
I then came to the idea of also using it also as a timemachine backup drive and for my iphone/ipad backups.
Finally if its already there, I thought I could use it to store more random stuff which accumulates slowly on my laptop on there.
So most of the data is not everyday use.

My plan is to use FreeNAS (not sure if Corral or 9.10 yet after testing Corral today) as my mainNAS/backupNAS system.

For my MainNas backup, but only as a temporary solution (until a friend of mine gets his FreeNAS too and we start to replicate each others snapshots as long term plan, maybe in 6 months or so) I wanted to use a second FreeNAS system (backupNas) just for replication of my snapshots, both running as VMs on my hardware.

To do so I run an esxi host on my hardware:

1. supermicro X11SSM-F board with VT-d

2. one m1018 controller HBA LSI Megaraid 9212-4i 6G in IT Mode with passthrough

3. 16GB ECC RAM Samsung M391A2K43BB1 DDR4-2133 DIMM

4. SSD containing my VMs

5. USB stick 16 GB Mach Xtreme Technology MX-ES to boot esxi

6. 2x2TB HDD WD Red WD20EFRX Intellipower

7. 2x4TB HDD Seagate IronWolf NAS (1x2TB and 1x4TB for mainNas, 1x2TB and 1x4TB as backupNas)

8. Intel Core i3 6100 2x 3.70GHz

In the future I want to add more VMs, like for home automation and dedicated servers. Until now I have a factorio headless server running via ubuntu on another VM. Therefore actual VMs:

1. mainNAS

2. backupNAS

3. ubuntu/factorio

Every whole disk is configured a single stripe zfs pool for mainNAS and backupNAS containing sub datasets:

1. MainNAS: 4TBDisk: 4TB Dataset "photos and videos", 2TBDisk: 2TB Datasets "timemachine", "data", "itunes", "iphoto"
2. BackupNAS: 4TBDisk: 4TB Dataset containing 4TB snapshot replications, 2TBDisk: 2TB Dataset containing 2TB snapshot replications

Last line of defence for all of my data will be my external HDDs still, as I wont wipe them, but I am planning to duplicate my photo data maybe once a year onto them.

The plan is to let my mainNas do snapshots once a day for my data on my 2TB drive(iDevice backups, timemachine...) and once a week for my photos and gopro videos on my 4TB drive as I wont add data too frequently there, and replicate the snapshots to my backupNas to have the data still if one of my main drives fails or gets wiped somehow else.
I also created an emergency freenas stick to boot from if my esxi fails which enables me to access my data on my mainNAS.


Now for my question on the whole setup:

A) How would you given my current hardware resources set up your system and/or configure it?

B) Is this even a real backup solution or am I missing something here (despite from having all disks running on the same host system)?

C) Does there has to be the second (backupNAS) FreeNAS system for replication, as it can't do SMART tests and saves its data in vmware containers on the "backup HDDs"? Or should/can I just use any ubuntu system with ssh to replicate?

D) As corral offers the possibility to run VMs: is there a solution to run a VM with passthrough of my m1018 on there to backup my data to somehow?


I am not sure which direction to go and invest my time into, so I am here to hear your opinions.

Thank you very much in advance for your inputs, I really appreciate.



Walter

 

[Dice]

heh.
I barely know where to begin x)
Your requests are a bit out on the wild in terms of what you want to use to accomplish the goal of file security and replication.
I suggest you skip virtualization out the gate. It is easy to move an installation of FreeNAS from bare metal to ESXi. Reinstall, upload the config file. If ESXi is properly configured this is all you need to worry about.

Some questionable choices:

HBA LSI Megaraid 9212-4i

The information on this card is abit dubious. It is labeled both as HBA and " Integrated RAID data protection provides the peace of mind of RAID protection." ...that sets off all sorts of alarms for this being a valid choice to a ZFS application. There is a risk that raid functionality interferes with the drives, clouding ZFS. Remember - a JBOD setting in a RAID card is not the same as a pure passthrough HBA. Stick to what is known.

For FreeNAS you'll want to setup drives in either mirror or raidz2.

Every whole disk is configured a single stripe zfs pool for mainNAS and backupNAS containing sub datasets:

1. MainNAS: 4TBDisk: 4TB Dataset "photos and videos", 2TBDisk: 2TB Datasets "timemachine", "data", "itunes", "iphoto"
2. BackupNAS: 4TBDisk: 4TB Dataset containing 4TB snapshot replications, 2TBDisk: 2TB Dataset containing 2TB snapshot replications

^this makes very little sense.
Bothering with replications and snapshots when there is no redundancy in place is a poor design choice, to put it nicely.

So here is what I like:
CPU, motherboard, RAM.
Ambition of replication off site.

Quickfix setup:
Get a trusted HBA.
Get 2 drives (mirror) or 4 drives (dual mirror, or raidz2). Put in one pool. Replication can be setup for datasets, so you could choose which datasets that have replication to an external site, and ...put incoming replications onto your single pool.

 

[melloa]

@WalterWampe, you have a very interesting project for sure, but maybe a little too complex for your 1st go around - I'm assume you are not new to IT based on what you've posted, so won't say you can't do it :)

I'd start with a small bare metal box. If you are planning only to run (like I do) FreeNAS as a NAS, you won't need too much power. Something with 8 or 16 GBRAM, boot on ssd, if the number of disks in around 6, including boot, you can find lots of options on the motherboard world that will provide you with that many sata ports.

At home I have ESXi for my VMs and two FreeNAS (Main and Back-up) = 3 physical computers :)

 

[WalterWampe]

OK thanks for your quick answers.

I expressed myself bad and will try again:

Goals:

1. performance oriented NAS solution in the LAN, not accessible from the internet. split into a photo/video archive (4Tb) and timemachine/other devices backup (2Tb)
2. future off-site replication of #1 for additional data security against theft, fire, piss
   
3. usage of available computing power for additional vms

thoughts:

• one drive per pool is enough since zfs has data integrity features and additional safety is generated by the off-site solution (#2)
  
• full support of zfs features with controller card, bought here and flashed with firmware v20 in IT mode
  
• short-term solution: putting the backupnas in a vm to have a "separate" machine for it while the off-site solution is not available. not satisfying goal #2, but ability to shut down when required and additional layer of security through separate access

... and later transportability to the offsite location (which replaces #2)

 

[Dice]

one drive per pool is enough since zfs has data integrity features and additional safety is generated by the off-site solution (#2)

ZFS data integrity features relies on some sort of redundancy.

 

[WalterWampe]

@melloa, I am not new to IT, rather ambitious and always looking for an optimal solution with a challenge resulting in features I would not have without the effort.
I would have spared much effort with 2 physical systems - i know...

 

[melloa]

I am not new to IT

That's what I thought ;)

rather ambitious and always looking for an optimal solution with a challenge resulting in features

You have gotten to the right place. I've never, in my 40 years IT life, seen a so diverse-knowledgeable-PITA group. Great people here willing to help, so go for it.

Good luck with your project.

 

[WalterWampe]

ZFS data integrity features relies on some sort of redundancy.

I have to admit I did not know that...
So at least I need a mirror to get all ZFS data integrity features?

Please help me with priorities then in general (for a home configuration), rather going for

• RAID-Z2 in #1 w/o backup

or

• RAID-1 in #1 with backup onto #2
• RAID-1 in #2

?

What are your thoughts about:

• RAID-Z1 in #1 with backup onto
• RAID-1 in #2

 

[WalterWampe]

Good luck with your project.

thank you!

 

[Dice]

rather going for

• RAID-Z2 in #1 w/o backup

This is the basic setup that fits the bill.

How much data do you have now? at what rate does it grow? Do you plan to purchase all drives new?

 

[WalterWampe]

How much data do you have now? at what rate does it grow? Do you plan to purchase all drives new?

About 2,5 TB atm, growing at approx 500GB per year (generously rounded).
I own the drives listed in OP (2x2TB and 2x4TB) they are 3 months old and in use for 3 weeks for test purpose.
So yes I will have to purchase additional drives new.

 

[Dice]

I'll offer a suggestion:
Since your amount of data is rather limited and you own 2 pairs of unequal sized drives, you'd be better off building your pool out of multiple mirrors.
Sort of:
Create a pool, use the topology (vdev) "mirrors", select 2 drives of equal size.
Start migrating data to that pool.
Once 2 more drives are empty, add those as a second mirror to the same pool, effectively increasing capacity of the pool.

The only reason to use more than one pool, is due to performance (which is irrelevant when you already start off with mirrors)

 

[WalterWampe]

Good idea, but not possible because all of my data is stored on several 2,5" external HDDs atm.

How about I get 2 more 2TB drives, create a 4 wide RAID-Z2 resulting in 4TB usable storage.
The 2x 4TB drives as offsite backup RAID-1.

 

[Dice]

How about I get 2 more 2TB drives, create a 4 wide RAID-Z2 resulting in 4TB usable storage.
The 2x 4TB drives as offsite backup RAID-1.

"RAID-1" = mirror in FreeNAS terminology.

Sure.
Use this calculator (link in post) to find out how much <usable> space you will have. Remember also that you should not fill shares post 80-90% before adding additional storage.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/zfs-raid-size-and-reliability-calculator.28191/

For 4x 2TB @ raidz2 : you'll end up with approx 3.2TB usable space.

 

[WalterWampe]

The information on this card is abit dubious. It is labeled both as HBA and " Integrated RAID data protection provides the peace of mind of RAID protection." ...that sets off all sorts of alarms for this being a valid choice to a ZFS application. There is a risk that raid functionality interferes with the drives, clouding ZFS. Remember - a JBOD setting in a RAID card is not the same as a pure passthrough HBA. Stick to what is known.

As for my controller - are there still any doubts and alarms after having it flashed to IT mode? Because that is what I did.
Shouldn't that disable all RAID functions for this card?

 

[Dice]

Not that I know of. I've never read about anyone cross flashing that model on the forum.
(I'll leave searching to you)

 

[WalterWampe]

Well, then I guess I am the first one. I have not searched for anyone in the forum but searched for a way to confirm its running IT mode.
Fresh out of EFI:

Am I good to go now, or do I have to get another controller?

 

[darkwarrior]

Hello there,

your controller is running IT AND firmware version 20, so you should be good to go right out of the box :)

 

[WalterWampe]

Thank you @Dice for pointing me into the right direction and for you help, I could learn a lot.