New on FreeNAS, need help about configuration

[Nedko]

Hi all and thanks for the awesome community.

I have old workstation that I would like to use as a home NAS/Virtualization.
My configuration is Lenovo E31 ThinkStation with Xeon E3-1225V2, 16 GB ECC RAM, 400 W PSU.
RAID Controller - 3ware 9650SE-8LPML
Hard drives - 8 various 1TB disks for the array and (probably) 120 GB SSD or 320 GB laptop disk for the OS.
I bought the RAID Controller with the idea to use it as RAID6 array, but now I've found the ZFS. The reason of RAID6 is the fault-tolerance (disks are not new and I expect in near future some faults).

The question is - should I create an RAID6 array or use the ZFS configuration? If ZFS then what configuration do you think would be good for me?

 

[wblock]

ZFS essentially converts the whole computer to a better hardware RAID. It is smarter and faster about what needs to be copied when a drive fails, and it has more resources (code and RAM) to deal with problems. Using a hardware RAID card with ZFS is actually a step backwards, because that card tries to hide hardware failures from the host system, preventing ZFS from handling those problems directly. That is why simple JBOD controllers are usually used and recommended for ZFS.

With eight 1TB drives, you could do either RAIDZ2 or four mirrors. There are spreadsheets around to calculate the actual resulting storage space, but I suspect it's about the same for both of those.

 

[Chris Moore]

RAID Controller - 3ware 9650SE-8LPML

You should not even try to use that with FreeNAS. Sell it on eBay or something.

In essence, FreeNAS is the RAID controller in that the filesystem, ZFS, is where the redundancy is configured and it is handled by the operating system instead of a separate hardware controller. To allow ZFS direct access to the drives, you need what is called an HBA (host bus adapter) and this is a good one to use:

SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664
Price: US $69.55

You would also need cables to connect from the HBA to the drives:

Lot of 2 Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206
Price: US $12.99

You may have difficulty getting this exact hardware but there are many options listed in the hardware guide:

FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

You might also want to review this guide:

Don't be afraid to be SAS-sy
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/don't-be-afraid-to-be-sas-sy.48/

The question is - should I create an RAID6 array or use the ZFS configuration? If ZFS then what configuration do you think would be good for me?

In ZFS terminology, the equivalent of RAID-6 would be RAIDz2 (2 drives of redundancy) and with 8 drives of 1TB each, after accounting for redundancy and overhead from the checksum data that ZFS stores, you should get about 4.9TB of usable capacity, but you should be aware that if you fill the pool past 80%, the system will begin to warn you about how full it is. That means you will only be able to put about 3.9TB of data into the system before the warnings start and when the pool is 90% full, the system will change the storage algorithm to be more careful about wasted space and that makes the system slower, so it is best to keep it from getting that full.

You should also try to review these resources to better understand ZFS:

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

 

[Nedko]

Thank you so much for the informative and awesome structured answers!

I manage to buy some more disks, unfortunately not the same (vendor, class, capacity). Total number of disks - 11 as follows:
2x500GB - will not use at all or will use for OS or whatever, will be attached to the motherboard's SATA as separate drives (no RAID will be used);

Attached on a separate RAID controller (mentioned on the first post) as single drive:
6x1TB disks - from WD RE to WD Green series;
2x1.5TB WD green disks.

The idea for now is to have 6x1TB disks in RAIDz1 or RAIDz2 (will decide later) and the 2x1.5 TB drives for not-so-important-information in stripe (may think for something other, but capacity will be priority).

I'll run the FreeNas from 2.5" 320GB laptop HDD or from 32gb USB flash device.

My primary goal is to have a storage place for my stuff and I really don't care about the transfer speed, because there will be not so intensive IO operations.

My questions:
* If the RAID controller brokes in some reason configured as single drive should I be able to move them to any controller and preserve the data?
* Is it a really good idea to run the distribution from USB device? I see that the writes are not so intensive, but if something happens with the USB if I do a new install on a new drive will all information be preserved?
* I would like to expose the NAS via DMZ to use the storage and access to a VM with LAMP installation. Should I follow any specific steps to secure the instance or I'm fine as it is?


Kind regards,
Nedko.

 

[Chris Moore]

If the RAID controller brokes in some reason configured as single drive should I be able to move them to any controller and preserve the data?

Not sure what your question is here, but it sounds like you are thinking of configuring the drives using the hardware RAID. If you do that, you can't connect the drives to any other controller because they won't be recognized.
If you use the SAS HBA that I suggested, there is no configuration of the drives in the controller and ZFS will access the drives directly to manage them. In that situation, the drives can be connected to a different controller and ZFS will still recognize the drives.

Is it a really good idea to run the distribution from USB device?

No

I see that the writes are not so intensive, but if something happens with the USB if I do a new install on a new drive will all information be preserved?

Regardless of what boot media you use, you will want to make a backup of the configuration which is done on the System>General tab in the GUI: http://doc.freenas.org/11/system.html#general
With the configuration backup, you can do a fresh installation on new boot media, stop the setup wizard, upload the configuration file and after the system reboots, you will be back where you were when the configuration backup was made. This backup saves all system settings.
As for the data, it is all stored in the ZFS pool and would not be affected by the loss of the boot drive. Once the configuration is restored, the data would be accessible again and it would be in the same state as before the boot drive failure. I boot from a 40GB hard disk drive because I don't trust booting from a USB memory stick.

I would like to expose the NAS via DMZ to use the storage and access to a VM with LAMP installation. Should I follow any specific steps to secure the instance or I'm fine as it is?

This is a more complicated question and I am not as familiar with this as I would need to be to give you a good answer. I would say, in general, that you would want to have the vm that is exposed in the DMZ connected to a separate NIC so the traffic to the vm could be isolated from other traffic to the NAS.
You might want to use an iocage jail instead of a full VM, but I am not sure if that would be secure enough to protect the NAS from any potential attack from the internet.
Here is an article you might want to look at:
https://www.digitalocean.com/commun...ache-mysql-and-php-famp-stack-on-freebsd-10-1

You might want to start a separate thread about the DMZ question to get the widest audience to look at that.