Mini XL+: 4 HDD setup advice...

[slowmail]

Hello,

I'm new to FreeNAS, and just received a MiniXL+. At this time, I plan to run it with just 4 HDDs (WD Red 3Tb), and would like to get a little bit of advice, and better understand the unit.

I would like to know if it would be a good idea to populate the HDDs in alternate bays, and what are the possible implications of doing so.
(ie: instead of placing the 4 HDDs into bays 1,2,3,4; to instead place them in bays 1,3,5,7 instead). The general thinking is, while there are only 4 drives, doing so might help keep the drive temperatures a little lower, or do you think there is generally no point to do so, and I should just put my drives into bays 1/2/3/4 instead?

Questions that I have about this include:
a.1) At a later time, would I be able to move the drives between bays easily? (eg: power off the unit, and move drives 3/5/6 into bays 2/3/4 respectively)?
The main reason for thinking about this is, I decide to add another 4 drives, I may prefer to keep them logically grouped so it would be easier for me to keep track of them.

a.2) Or similarly, if I had 8 drives (2 pools of different HDDs) do you think it might be better to keep them interleaved (ie: Pool-1 in bays 1/3/5/7, Pool-2 in bays 2/4/6/8) for for better thermal consistency?

b) More importantly, if for any reason my MiniXL+ unit has some sort of failure, would I be able to transplant these drives into a 4-bay FreeNAS unit, or perhaps another 8-bay unit's bays 5/6/7/8 (because bays 1/2/3/4 are currently in use...); or into bays 2/4/6/8 of another 8-bay unit that was similarly setup?

Thanks!

 

[Redcoat]

Welcome to the forums!

My comments related to your temperature-based question(s) are influenced by being a FreeNAS Mini owner for 3+ years (until it was lost from water damage in a fire).

I found that Mini "ran hot" and keeping the naturally-cooled CPU cool was challenging (so I installed a fan on it), the HDD's less so even though they were "tight-spaced" when 4 were installed and relied on a single rear-mounted fan for air flow. I did put a couple of very small fans in the grill below the drive bays to get more air into the case and across the motherboard.

I don't know how many case fans the XL+ has, but I see it has a CPU fan as-delivered, - that's a plus.

I think your plan to put 4 drives in non-adjacent slots is a sound one - I would start there, too.

a.1.: FreeNAS is not sensitive to physical drive slot location or SATA port. It'll pick up the drives and the pool(s) irrespective.

a.2.: I personally doubt the suggested tactic will make any discernible difference.

b. Yes, you can transplant drives between boxes - as long as you have the drive group making up a pool you can export the pool, move it to another FreeNAS server with free bays and have the pool import just fine. Pre-fire I had the 4 drive Mini and a 12-bay Dell with 6 drives in it as a backup/test/learning machine. When I had motherboard issues with the Mini I pulled its 4 drives and put them in the Dell and opened up the Mini's pool on it - never a problem.

Good luck with your new machine and FreeNAS experience!