SOLVED New FreeNAS to build - questions before installation

[isagarran]

Hello,

I'm rebuilding my FreeNAS configuration but I prefer to ask you before to review it before installing.Lat time I did some mistakes. Could you help me, please ?

My previous FreeNAS configuration crashed (three disks crashed) and I asked help in this forum. They advise me to upgrade to a new FreeNAS version, change my Raid version and use a SSD disk.
For now, I didn't change my hardware a lot. I had before :

• MotherBoard socket 1155 MSI H67MA-E35 (Revision B3).
• Build FreeNAS-8.3.0-BETA2-x64 (r12317M)
• 4 disks Seagate Barracuda 2Tb
• Memory 8Gb
• OCZ PSU ZS550W-EU - ZS Series, 550W 80Plus Bronze
• Processor Intel® Celeron® Processor G530 (2M Cache, 2.40 GHz)
• RAIDZ1 pool (ZFS software RAID level "RAID5")

I backed up my data on one Seagate Barracuda 2Tb. So all is fine on this side :)
I bought four new disks. I have now four 2TB disks. I would like to use later on the disk used in order to backup the data. So at the end 6 disks.

• I saw on Internet SSD disk of 60GB. But I didn't see in the FreeNAS documentation how to deploy FreeNAS on it. Could you help me?
• Raid version recommended was RAIDZ2. I suppose he was referring to

RAIDZ 3, 5, or 7 drives I had 4 drives (similar as RAID5 so 3*3TB=6TB I can use)
RAIDZ2 4, 6, or 8 drives Based on this recommendation as I had 4 drives, RAIDZ2 should be the one I had to use. Right?
RAIDZ3 5, 7, 9 drives

• My goal with four disks was to have 3*3TB=6TB with one parity disk. Now I have six disks, I expect the same behavior. 5*2TB=10TB + one parity disk. Am I right ? Does RAIDZ2 modify this calculation?
  
• People that proposed me all this recommendation has its own FreeNAS on Ubuntu ? Is there a special procedure in order to do it? Last time I built it on SD, with the FreeBSD version. I would prefer to use Ubuntu. Could you tell me where is the procedure for that ?
• Then at the beginning of the installation, I'll have only five disks. I planned to copy the contents of backup disk inside the NAS, then add this sixth in the NAS. Does something prevent to act like that?

I'll appreciate greatly your answer. Even if I used during a long time FreeNAS 8.3, I spent a long time to think the way I'm going to build it and at the end, I'm not sure.
Best regards,
Isagarran

 

[dwhite78]

https://jsfiddle.net/Biduleohm/paq5u7z5/1/embedded/result/

With 5, 2 TB Drives, you would have 4.296 TiB of usable space. Not 10tb.

 

[isagarran]

Hello,
Thanks for the quick and accurate answer. With 6 drives (when all disks are in the NAS), I'll have 5,728TB using RAIDZ2.
What prevents me to set a RAIDZ1 ? I'll have 7,16TB usable data space (2TB more than RAIDZ1)
Isagarran

 

[dwhite78]

Hello,
Thanks for the quick and accurate answer. With 6 drives (when all disks are in the NAS), I'll have 5,728TB using RAIDZ2.
What prevents me to set a RAIDZ1 ? I'll have 7,16TB usable data space (2TB more than RAIDZ1)
Isagarran

Nothing prevents that. RaidZ1 simply offers less data protection.

 

[danb35]

With 6 drives (when all disks are in the NAS), I'll have 5,728TB using RAIDZ2.

...except that you can't convert an n-disk RAIDZp into an n+1-disk RAIDZp. If you want a six-disk RAIDZ2 pool, you need to create it with six disks at the outset*.

* Yes, there are ways around this. But if you need to be told what they are, or much less how to do them, you shouldn't be doing them.

 

[danb35]

People that proposed me all this recommendation has its own Freenas on Ubuntu ?

I have no idea what you're asking here. FreeNAS is a customized flavor of FreeBSD--it isn't Linux at all, much less Ubuntu. So, if you're asking about running FreeNAS on Ubuntu, no, you can't do that. If you're asking about running Ubuntu on FreeNAS (i.e., as a virtual machine), yes, that's possible with FreeNAS 11, presuming your hardware supports the appropriate virtualization features.

 

[isagarran]

thanks for your reply.

So Raidz2 is the configuration I need.

For other questions, any ideas ?

• I saw on Internet SSD disk of 60GB. But I didn't see in the FreeNAS documentation how to deploy FreeNAS on it. Could you help me? Perhaps continuing on USB key is sufficient. I don't know.
  
• People that proposed me all this recommendation has its own FreeNAS on Ubuntu? Is there a special procedure in order to do it? Last time I built it on SD, with the FreeBSD version. I would prefer to use Ubuntu. Could you tell me where is the procedure for that?
• Then at the beginning of the installation, I'll have only five disks. I planned to copy the contents of backup disk inside the NAS, then add this sixth in the NAS. Does something prevent to act like that?

When I am looking at your configuration, you have 128GB RAM and I have only 8GB. My NAS will be used for now for backup, photos and medias storage. I don't plan any Plex media server but it could be an idea. Could you tell me if 8GB is sufficient?

Regards.Isagarran

 

[isagarran]

Hello Danb35.
Thanks for tyou answer about Ubuntu. I read that in the signature of the guy that recommends me to change my configuration. But perhaps you are right, he was using a virtual machine and I didn't understand that. OK I have no problem to use the today distribution. It worked fine even with 8.3 version. I didn't get any bug.
regards.Isagarran

 

[danb35]

I saw on Internet SSD disk of 60GB. But I didn't see in the FreeNas documentation how to deploy FreeNas on it. Could you help me ?

Help you with what? You want to install FreeNAS to the SSD? Sure, go ahead. When you boot up the installer, pick the SSD as the device on which you want to install FreeNAS.

People that proposed me all this recommendation has its own Freenas on Ubuntu ?

See my post above; I have no idea what you're asking here.

Does something prevent to act like that ?

Yes, it does, as I said above.

Could you tell me if 8GB is sufficient ?

8 GB is probably adequate for storage. Expect that you'll need more RAM if you want to run any but the most trivial plugins or jails.

 

[isagarran]

Thanks for the clarification. Now it seems that I missed something.
Then at the beginning of the installation, I'll have only five disks. I planned to copy the contents of backup disk inside the NAS, then add this sixth in the NAS. Does something prevent to act like that ?
Yes, it does, as I said above.
Does it mean that temporarily I can't have 5 disks, revover the data on the sixth disk, then include the sixth disk in the "pool" ? Once a pool is defined we can't enlarge it ?
regards.Isagarran

 

[danb35]

Once a pool is defined we can't enlarge it ?

Yes, you can expand a pool. But, as I said above, you can't turn a five-disk RAIDZ2 into a six-disk RAIDZ2. If you want a six-disk RAIDZ2, you need to start with six disks.

Read https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[Stux]

RAIDZ 3, 5, or 7 drives I had 4 drives (similar as RAID5 so 3*3TB=6TB I can use)
RAIDZ2 4, 6, or 8 drives Based on this recommendation as I had 4 drives, RAIDZ2 should be the one I had to use. Right?
RAIDZ3 5, 7, 9 drives

This advise is no longer accurate.

With Raidz2, use as many drives as you want between the minimum (4) and the recommended maximum (say 10).

 

[diedrichg]

Do you have at least one other disk, even if it's smaller? I'd you do, you can build the pool with the (5) 2TB disks + the spare disk which would = (6) disks... each reporting as the size of the smallest drive in the pool.

After you create the pool and copy over the data, and then verify that the copy procedure was 1:1, then you can follow the procedure in docs.freenas.org to offline the spare disk and replace it with the 2TB drive that currently holds your data. This process will replace the 2TB drive as the 6th drive and now all drives will report as 2TB each. HOWEVER! This will format the 2TB drive that had your data on it so that it can be added to the pool - this means you BETTER be sure all your data copied correctly to the pool because there will be no fallback.

Also, if the spare drive is too small, your pool size won't be big enough to copy over your data from the 2TB.

 

[isagarran]

Hello,
Thanks for the clarification and your clear presentation. Not sure If I recorded all of it in one night.
It is quite complicated. Clearly I did some wrong assumptions and I'm wondering if I invested on the right place. I bought Server Rack 19", cabinet, patch panels and so on in order to host the new FreeNAS and some disks.
RaidZ1 was the first choice I had as it was similar to RAID5 and the goal was

• has a fast read/write access to disk (network wasn't and isn't an issue for now. 100GB is sufficient but I can increase easily to 1GBs)
• have big amount of storage secured with a disk parity ( 4 disks). I thought I had 6TB usable and again I was wrong twice : I had 4,296TB and in fact I should use either RAIDZ2 with 4 disks or having 5 disks instead of 4. More againg, My data was not as secured as I thought.

I think I did the good choice investing in FreeNAS and I will pursue. I have 6 SATA slots in my motherboard (Perhaps I'll change it later on) and all disks have SATA interfaces. Based on what you said, either I'm using :

1. RAIDZ - 5 disks + SSD SATA (FreeNAS) - 5,728TB usable data (copy data from 2TB backup disk to the pool and use it for backup only)
   
2. RAIDZ2 - 4 disks + SSD SATA (FreeNAS) - 2,864TB usable data (copy data from 2TB backup disk to the pool and use it with the other 2TB as backup disks only)
   
3. RAIDZ2 - 4 disks + SSD disk USB 3.0 (FreeNAS) then evolve to 6TB - 5,728TB usable data (copy data 2TB backup disk to the pool, then add the two 2TB disks in the pool)
4. RAIDZ2 - 5 disks + IDE disk + SSD disk USB 3.0 (FreeNAS) - The procedure you described seems to complicated for me. I can find an IDE disk somewhere not very large (less than 500GB) or I need to buy another disk ...

In all cases, I need to backup using rsync these data somewhere (USB disks attached to a PC each night ... something like that. Did I understand correctly ? Any recommendations on one or the other option ?
Sorry if my questions seems very dumb.
Regards.Isagarran

 

[diedrichg]

The procedure I listed above would look like this:

Requirement (7 SATA ports or add a HBA card)

SSD - FreeNAS installed on it

let's stop there... If you don't have 7 SATA ports then you will need to install FreeNAS on a USB.

let's continue...

Build you pool with:
Disk 0 - 2TB
Disk 1 - 2TB
Disk 2 - 2TB
Disk 3 - 2TB
Disk 4 - 2TB
Disk 5 - 500GB

In FreeNAS, this will look like all drives are 500GB each because it uses the size of the smallest disk (500GB). This will give you a total usable storage of approximately 1432GiB when configured as RAIDZ-2 [which should account for any ZFS system overhead usage and keeping the pool below 80% capacity (ZFS performance issue)].

Next you would copy your data from the external drive to FreeNAS. You would do this with the drive attached to another computer on your network and sending the files to FreeNAS through a "share" which could be a SMB share, NFS share or AFP share.

Next, verify the data copied to FreeNAS 1:1

You will now follow the steps here http://doc.freenas.org/11/storage.html#replacing-a-failed-drive to grow your pool with the 2TB drive.

CAUTION: This is not ideal as you will not have a backup of your data in case something happens while adding the final disk or you had a bad transfer of data from the steps above. Not to mention, what will you do about backing up your data in the future? You're going to need that external drive eventually to backup your data. You should just buy one more 2TB disk and not deal with any of this.

After following the docs to replace the 500GB drive with the 2TB drive, your pool will grow to approximately 5.73TiB if configured as RAIDZ-2.

It would then look like
Disk 0 - 2TB
Disk 1 - 2TB
Disk 2 - 2TB
Disk 3 - 2TB
Disk 4 - 2TB
Disk 5 - 2TB

 

[Stux]

An alternative is to partition one of the 2TB drives into 1TB partitions. Then build a 6-way Raidz2 from 4 disks and the two partitions.

This will give you circa 4TB usable. Restore your 2TB backup, then replace one of the 1TB partitions, then replace the other, with the physical disk you partitioned.

Doing this right is tricky, and possibly is what @danb35 was referrring to here

 

[danb35]

Doing this right is tricky, and possibly is what @danb35 was referrring to here

I was thinking more of creating a degraded pool (create a 2 TB sparse file, create a six-disk RAIDZ2 pool with five disks and the sparse file, immediately offline the sparse file, replace the sparse file with the sixth 2 TB disk once the data is transferred), but either could work. My method gives full pool capacity at the cost of one disk's worth of redundancy; your method gives half capacity but (mostly) full redundancy. Either way, all the disks need to be partitioned, the gptids determined, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were other ZFS tricks that could be done as well. But, as you say, it's tricky, and there's significant risk of making irreversible and adverse changes to the pool.

 

[isagarran]

Hello,
OK thanks for your help. As it is too complicated, I bought a new disk. I'm have now 6 disks 2TB, a SSD disk in order to bot on.
I test the procedure and it works fine.
So I'm going to build the NAS in Raid Z2 as you suggested.
I've to dig a lot on the user's guide for that now
regards
Isagarran