New to forum but not FreeNAS!

[SecDeath]

Folks,

I've been using FreeNAS to manage my storage for sometime now. I have around 8tb worth of usable storage across 2 different storage arrays. I'm using ZFS1 for my newest storage array and have been using a RAID5 hardware array for my first ever storage array. The first one I've been running for a few years now. It's been amazing except for the various uses I need it for. I've been using iscsi to store my VMs but also storage for TV shows as well. Seems as if all that reading and writing was too much for the array and had a lot of read/write latency. After I created the second array for storage only... My issues went away.

I absolutely love the FreeNAS plugins that are available such as Transmission, Sickrage, Couchpotato, and PLEX. These are just all amazing. I love the experience with all the issues I've had with setting everything up. I've learned so much more about Linux jails which I find to be extremely useful in certain situations.

So anyways... This is my first post and hope to provide more insight into my experience with everyone so as to help anyone that runs into similar issues with new setups.

Really glad to be here!

Andrew (SecDeath)


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[gpsguy]

Welcome to the forums!

One question, one your old system with hardware RAID5, are you using ZFS or UFS? If ZFS, that's a recipe for disaster and I hope you have good backups. For iSCSI we recommend ZFS on striped mirrors. And, don't use more than 50% of the storage.

 

[SecDeath]

Would you recommend to discontinue use of the hardware raid and use the ZFS array in FreeNAS? I honestly don't think I ever set anything up in FreeNAS besides creating new zvols for iscsi


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[gpsguy]

Most definitely.

Backup your data, create a new pool using either onboard ports, or add a dumb HBA like an IBM M1015.

We probably see a at least a user every week, that has serious problems due to using ZFS on hardware RAID.

Would you recommend to discontinue use of the hardware raid ...

 

[SecDeath]

Holy shit... Wonder if that's the reason of my read/write issues :-(


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[SecDeath]

This would be amazing to resolve


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[SecDeath]

Well basically my esxi server keeps indicating very bad io read/write speeds


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[gpsguy]

Are you using iSCSI targets with your ESXi box? If so, striped mirrors would give you the best performance. Also, don't use more than 50% of your volume for storage.

 

[SecDeath]

Yes exactly. All my VMs use iscsi targets


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[SecDeath]

So you saying when I create a VM within the zvol I shouldn't use more than 50% of the zvol space I allocated?


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[SecDeath]

Well actually what I meant was... I need to create a virtual disk for the VM to use... I meant do you mean I should allocate more than 50% of the zvol space for the VM disk?


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[gpsguy]

Here's a thread that might help explain the situation - https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ailable-space-threshold-properly-iscsi.27419/