Noob question about jails. A bit confused even after reading

[riccochet]

So i am still in the process of hopefully migrating my media to freenas. I'll be building a new machine for this, and i know that this new machine will be fine, but i find that i'm struggling a bit conceptually with how everything will work and i was hoping for some clarification.
This server is being built pretty much exclusively for plex transcoding, with other plugins being used on a curiosity basis. I also use it to backup files on our computers that aren't really business related but i just want to keep but thats all just a simple CIFS share.
How i understand it, is that i will need to create a volume (and a windows share) for my media itself. This will be most of my drives, i will be getting WD Red drives for this. I will also need to create a volume for the plex server plugin as well, and for this i will be using a small SSD drive as performance is really what i care about most. From that volume i will create a jail for the plex server plugin, configuring the media location as a source destination. What i'm not clear on is whether that same jail can be used for other plugins, and if not, can i create multiple jails from the same volume, or do i need a separate drive/volume for each plugin... Or do i set multiple volumes for the same SSD by not allowing it to use the whole drive...?
Obviously, not being able to play with the software and relying only on reading and youtube videos is not ideal, i just want to try and make sure i understand as much as possible so i can hit the ground running when i finally do build the new machine.

 

[melloa]

@riccochet

There are a lot to understand between getting the server together and configuring it, I recon, and the learning curve some times is slow and the path not as easy as one would like.

Let's break your post and see if I can help:"

I'll be building a new machine for this,

Check the recommended hardware to be sure you will be in sync with the folks here. Here-s the link: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

With that out of the way, you will need to decide how much space you will be needing, add 5 years growth; decide if you want to have no disk, two disks, three disks redundancy, and use @Bidule0hm to have an idea of the number of drives you will need, link here: https://jsfiddle.net/Biduleohm/paq5u7z5/1/embedded/result/

How i understand it, is that i will need to create a volume

Well ... not let's read: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/. Don't be afraid of @cyberjock 's avatar, his guide is pretty good (I read three time).

On a side note, for the boot:

If using USB sticks, please get two good quality ones and install in mirror. Nowadays if the cost of SSDs going down, I did move to them.

When you get to this point, you will be in a position to better understand and ask the right questions, but:

How i understand it, is that i will need to create a volume (and a windows share)

Yes, for your media. Here's a good guide for CIFs configuration: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas-and-samba-smb-permissions-video.8/. You will be probably creating more than one (personal, videos, music, ...).

From that volume i will create a jail for the plex server plugin

Two different things: jail and plugin. You will better understand later, but jail is like a mini-freebsd computer inside FreeNAS, that is an appliance based on FreeBSD. You can create many of them, make different servers inside of each (i.e. Plex), etc. They require some experience to get going.

Plugin is a pre-configured application installer that will do that for you, requiring some configuration.

Again ... too early in the game.

Hope to see you soon, up and running, so the folks here can help on next steps.

[]'s

 

[nojohnny101]

You're asking all good questions. I feel FreeNAS does have a steep learning curve but if you put in the time, do lots of research and ask good questions, you'll get there and be so glad you did.

Instead of trying to type out information that has already been hashed out (and been asked many times before), I will refer to you to a PDF a veteran on her put together to explain things a bit:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Go read that and try and understand it the best you can and then come back if you still have questions.

Some notes about what you wrote:
- Same some money and just put your jails on your regular pool (made up of WD Reds as you alluded to). You will not see the benefits of an SSD for your jails unless you are running 10GBe networking and/or have high demands needs (which it sounds like you don't).
- Your needs sound almost identical to mine currently, so I'm not sure where you are in researching hardware but you can start with the hardware in my signature and go from there (although I will be eventually moving to a Xeon CPU).
- Overall, from what your describe, you will only need one volume (to keep things simple), and you make vdevs within that volume which in turn have datasets that hold your data. This is all explained in the link PDF. You should not need multiple volumes just because you want to do jails (this often complicates things).

Good luck!

EDIT: @melloa beat me to it!

 

[melloa]

EDIT: @melloa beat me to it!

I type fast!

 

[Jailer]

Why did you delete your original post? Asking questions is how you gain knowledge and there are plenty of people on this forum that are more than willing to help out and point you in the right direction.

 

[wblock]

Additionally, other people with similar questions can learn from them.

 

[melloa]

Original question:

So i am still in the process of hopefully migrating my media to freenas. I'll be building a new machine for this, and i know that this new machine will be fine, but i find that i'm struggling a bit conceptually with how everything will work and i was hoping for some clarification.
This server is being built pretty much exclusively for plex transcoding, with other plugins being used on a curiosity basis. I also use it to backup files on our computers that aren't really business related but i just want to keep but thats all just a simple CIFS share.
How i understand it, is that i will need to create a volume (and a windows share) for my media itself. This will be most of my drives, i will be getting WD Red drives for this. I will also need to create a volume for the plex server plugin as well, and for this i will be using a small SSD drive as performance is really what i care about most. From that volume i will create a jail for the plex server plugin, configuring the media location as a source destination. What i'm not clear on is whether that same jail can be used for other plugins, and if not, can i create multiple jails from the same volume, or do i need a separate drive/volume for each plugin... Or do i set multiple volumes for the same SSD by not allowing it to use the whole drive...?
Obviously, not being able to play with the software and relying only on reading and youtube videos is not ideal, i just want to try and make sure i understand as much as possible so i can hit the ground running when i finally do build the new machine.

 

[Ericloewe]

Why did you delete your original post? Asking questions is how you gain knowledge and there are plenty of people on this forum that are more than willing to help out and point you in the right direction.

Additionally, other people with similar questions can learn from them.

Nothing the ol' revert button can't fix. It's fixed.

 

[melloa]

Nothing the ol' revert button can't fix. It's fixed.

You can also use your magic and delete mine ;)

 

[riccochet]

so i deleted it cause i found the answers i was looking for shortly after I posted this and thought "well, someone is going to see that as a stupid question and condescendingly point me to the materials i just read..."
I have posted on way too many forums in my day. I just assume everyone is going to treat you like garbage. :p

Guess i might as well answer some of the statements i have read in some of the responses. I already have my hardware figured out. So i am good there and have posted in the "will it freenas" forum to get some tweaking done. I also did it by following the recommended hardware guide on these forums. :)
Also, the reason i wanted to get a separate SSD strictly for the plex media server (and other plugins) is that I was worried about the I/O while transcoding from those same 5400 rpm red drives. Better safe than sorry i say. And the addition of a small SSD isn't going to change the cost of the server much when i'm already looking at around $5000 for my current build. If you're curious, this is the build i've come up with for now...
This is the micro ATX build i was looking at https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/riccochet/saved/#view=xZZTWZ
I would really like to also do a mini ITX build like this https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/riccochet/saved/#view=J8j7P6 but parts are a bit scarce for that case and motherboard...

 

[Jailer]

I run my jails, including plex, off my main pool and haven't experienced any issues at all. Most likely unless you are going to have a 10G network your bottleneck will be network throughput.

 

[riccochet]

I have gbit network throughout my house. How many simultaneous transcodes do you have max? And you run this off of the 5400rpm red drives or the 7200rpm?

 

[Jailer]

All my clients are direct play so no transcoding but 3 at most. Yes 5400 RPM drives, 6 of them in RAIDZ2.

 

[melloa]

so i deleted it cause i found the answers i was looking for shortly after I posted this and thought "well, someone is going to see that as a stupid question and condescendingly point me to the materials i just read..."

Understand, but this has been a good forum for me. Most of the guys here are nice and everybody's posts will also help other users. Glad you got your answers.