need help to partition the installation drive

[Viper780]

Hi everyone

I have here an new NAS
Intel Xeon E3-1225 v3 on an ASRock C226 WS with 2x8GB Kingston ECC Ram and Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB as Systemdrive.

The Storage are 5x4TB WD Red.

I want to use the SSD as system drive, 4GB swap disk, 64GB L2ARC, 64GB ZIL and the rest as the Data Partition where some Database will be.

The NAS is only Homestorage where mostly some movies and tvshows (for 4 users with GBit LAN), music (about 10-15 users over the Internet 50/10MBit now and 100/100MBit in the future - Subsonic should be the service incl. on the fly recoding for mobile devices), Ownclod storage with Adressbooks and so on for the same users as the music service and as backup medium for the 4 users in the LAN

My problem is - how do i get the proper partitions? How do i make SWAP, L2ARC and ZIL with partitons in FreeNAS?

best regards
Danielhttp://geizhals.at/eu/samsung-ssd-840-evo-250gb-mz-7te250bw-a977940.html

 

[ser_rhaegar]

You cannot use the system drive for anything but the FreeNAS installation. It is highly recommended that you use a 4-8GB USB drive for this instead of an SSD which would be wasted. Swap partitions are built into the spinners when you create your pool, 2GB per physical disk is the default. Also for your workload, L2ARC/ZIL drives are unlikely to be needed. 5x4TB in a RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 should easily saturate 1GbE.

 

[Viper780]

Thx ser_rhaegar for your quick reply.

Ok, i understand what you say, but i don't want these things for various reasons.
-no USB sticks because i had bad expirience with that. Most problem is that someone just break them of, unplug them and so on. It has to be something SATA and internal.
-I don't want the SWAP on my storage. For that i have the SSD, which is much faster and the disks can spin down when there is no access on it (yes i know thats not good for the disks - but i don't care)
-I only want RAIDZ, for only 5 disks it is unlikly that 2 dies at the same time, and even when there shouldn't be data on it which i can't get from my backups. (tvshows, movies and most of the music aren't that important to me)
-L2ARC and ZIL aren't necessary - I know that, but I have plenty of space on the SSD and I want to play around with it (also with dedupe) for another workrelated project.

actually one single disk will saturate my 1GbE LAN and even my old SS4200 with 3x1TB RAIDZ did that.

So could anyone help me to reach my goals with FreeNAS or do i have to go to NAS4Free or any Solaris/OpenIndiana/Nexenta and so on Solution?
I'm willing to learn and read. Also put many of time and effort in it, but i won't do it if i have to do everything here from scratch and alone. That wouldn't be efficient for an HomeNAS and with no deeper knowledge i will not use FreeNAS at work. (Planed to use company _and_ community supported Distributions here instead of NetApp Filers because we had some good expirience on other fields with this approach).

 

[ser_rhaegar]

I can't help you with any of that. However I will say that in RaidZ, with 5 consumer 4TB drives means you will almost certainly lose data if you do a rebuild (i.e. lose 1 disk) after filling 12TB of data. Those drives have a URE of 1E14, or 1 error per 12TB read.

 

[pirateghost]

A. you can use any number of USB header adapters to make your USB internal.

B. Keep backups of your config

C. YOU CAN NOT PARTITION YOUR OS DRIVE

All of this info is covered immensely all over these forums. The onus is on you to do your own research. All of your questions could have been answered by searching.

 

[Viper780]

Yes i know - that this would be the worst case and rebuilding an RaidZ with 5 Disks would be about the 12TB - but i can affored to probably loose one bit in my home environment.
The only thing stored on the NAS that would significant be changed would be my 10 year old datas for my diplomathesis. And i guess the fifth backup of that i can take the risk. This is a home NAS with no important Data on it. If i wouldn't use it as playground i would just take a JBOD configuration.

 

[Viper780]

A. you can use any number of USB header adapters to make your USB internal.

B. Keep backups of your config

C. YOU CAN NOT PARTITION YOUR OS DRIVE

All of this info is covered immensely all over these forums. The onus is on you to do your own research. All of your questions could have been answered by searching.

sorry just saw your reply after typing my msg.
I found that in the forum - but i don't see any reasons why. No one could explain it and i don't see any real limitations for that. I hoped an community driven project would have been more helpful on such requests. I guess I'll stay with commercial products where i can have the same value for the same money calculated over 10 years.

 

[cyberjock]

It's not about "affording" to lose one bit. We've had people that lost their pool. All you gotta do is corrupt the zpool metadata and the whole pool is done for.

Again, this is all covered in the manual, stickies, and the noobie guide I wrote.

 

[Viper780]

cyberjock, also thx for your effort and the many replys - i read _and_ understood them all (yes really - reading and evaluating the last 4 months different solutions for ZFS). But my data isn't that important. When it's gone, then its gone. Just make an new pool, play the important data back from the backup and be happy of the new gained space. It's an HomeNAS! (with an overpowered hardware).

Are my whishes and reasons for that so odd? I have two FreeNAS 0.7 boxes for 4 to 5 years now and know some of the basics and tweaks, but i'm no expert on that.

I find it odd that the data partition isn't used for any plugins or userdata like on the old FreeNAS. So i guess i have to buy another, smaller SSD for the System, use the 200GB (left 50GB for spare and wearleveling) as Data/Swap-disk and configure two files on that as L2ARC and ZIL

 

[cyberjock]

The boot partition is expected to go on a USB stick, and that makes plugins and user data a horrible idea.

Using the same drive as an L2ARC and ZIL is a recipe for disaster... not to mention ZILs should ALWAYS be mirrored.

 

[cyberjock]

Before you post again I'd appreciate it if you read the manual, our stickies, and our noobie guide. Almost every question you've asked could have been answered from one of those sources.

 

[Viper780]

Sorry cyberjock, but i have to repeate myself.
I've read them all and understood them. Really i did. I know that this things were mentioned there and you told everyone that this is a bad idea. But it isn't important here, because i don't use USB (and i don't want to!), i don't care of dataloss in this case (also for the ZIL) and in previous tests with OpenIndiana in an Virtualmachine there where no noticeable drawbacks with ZIL and L2ARC on the same or different SSD.
When i understand it correct than the worst thing that could happen when the ZIL goes south, that I'll loose the last second(s) of data commited to the vdevs. Usually the VM doesn't mind that and in my case it is really irrelevant.

To come back to your last post. No none of my inital questions were answered there. Just "you shouldn't do that". I knew that all along, but want a hint why not in this case and further how can i do it anyway. I really appriciate what you are doing for the comunity and your time spending here helping people. But i don't see any point that helps me here (yes i know, i could loose data if do that what i've planed - but i really don't care).

 

[pirateghost]

If you want to partition the OS drive you will need to compile a build from source and configure your partitions. Good luck.

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

[cyberjock]

Not to sound harsh(but I'm sure it'll sound harsh) but we're not particularly interested in explaining why to everyone. As I said, your questions ahve been asked PLENTY of times, and a little searching the forums will give you the "why" if you really want to know.

 

[Viper780]

Not to sound harsh(but I'm sure it'll sound harsh) but we're not particularly interested in explaining why to everyone. As I said, your questions ahve been asked PLENTY of times, and a little searching the forums will give you the "why" if you really want to know.

no there aren't and I'm sure in the last 4 months reading here i would remember it.
I can only remeber "it is not possible" or "its likly to loose all your data". The first thing isn't an explaination only an excuse not to dig deeper and the seconed is why i have backups here (on production environments its a different thing).

I'm going to sleep over it an evaluate the options here.

One last question where i didn't find an answer (or it was older than 2 years) - can i use a disk or partition of an disk as swap? I don't want use 2GB of each storage disk. But also when selecting "0" for "Swap size on each drive in GiB" there will be an partition of 2GB cut off, at the beginning of each disk. I can't find anything in the GUI or anywhere else (like in any manual, how to or with google).

 

[cyberjock]

LOL.. there is bro. *I've* written them!

Good luck bro!

 

[Viper780]

I'm not your bro - and i also know you have written most of the content shown here. I guess than you should read it again.

I appriciate that you want to help - but your posts here are only spam. You don't give any hints or clues how to or why not to (except dataloss). I've asked them many times and i stated that i know the risks.
Also you are unable to answer my last question which sound to me really clear. I've searched over an week and still don't have found any answer that worked for me

 

[cyberjock]

Ironic that you'd call me spam.. because at least 2 people said I should have deleted this thread before it had a reply.

 

[joelmusicman]

Most people come to the forums asking for advice, not just to be told they're right.

Use a $10 USB stick already. Put it inside the case and backup your config file. Problem solved.