NTFS vs ZFS and ECC dilemma

[Eli Singer]

That is true of course.
I'm thinking about minimum downtime, that's why i like RAID 1, no downtime at all.
Is there a way to get something similar with FreeNAS?

 

[pirateghost]

That is true of course.
I'm thinking about minimum downtime, that's why i like RAID 1, no downtime at all.
Is there a way to get something similar with FreeNAS?

FreeNAS uses ZFS only.

You will not get zero downtime if your only other machine is a Windows box.
You will not be able to put your FreeNAS drives in a Windows box and use them at all.

 

[anodos]

That is true of course.
I'm thinking about minimum downtime, that's why i like RAID 1, no downtime at all.
Is there a way to get something similar with FreeNAS?

http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/freenas_storage.html#volumes

Note that hard drive redundancy only protects you from a very specific (and common) failure mode - a failed hard drive. Things break in all sorts of creative and uncommon ways. For instance, RAID1 doesn't protect you from lightning strikes, power supply failures, motherboard failures, tornadoes, or following advice from Linus techtips. That's why people have backups.

 

[Mirfster]

cy only protects you from a very specific (and common) failure mode - a failed hard drive. Things break in all sorts of creative and uncommon ways. For instance, RAID1 doesn't protect you from lightning strikes, power supply failures, motherboard failures, tornadoes, or following advice from Linus techtips.

Hah, that last part made coffee come out my nose... :D

 

[danb35]

that's why i like RAID 1, no downtime at all.
Is there a way to get something similar with FreeNAS?

Of course there is--ZFS mirrors work, from the end-user's perspective, just like RAID 1. Create a volume out of two (or three or more, if desired) disks, tell FreeNAS to make it as a mirror, and you're done. A pool of n mirrored disks will survive the failure of n-1 disks.

 

[Eli Singer]

So if i'll sum it up, in case of a hardware failure, let's say a dead motherboard, the minimal downtime will be if i happen to have a spare system or at least a spare MB that supports ECC memory etc that i can transfer my FreeNAS to.
Until i buy a new motherboard.
This solution cost money and takes time when i compare them to a failing RAID 1 array on NTFS. For example, i once had an m1015 who died on me. All i had to do is to plug the HDD's to the MB instead of the card and i had access to everything, no downtime at all.
That is something to consider indeed.

This brings me to the question of backups.
It makes sense to me to backup the data onto NTFS HDD's so if something fails, i can just plug them into my main machine and use them.
The part i don't fully understand is how exactly this two file systems communicate.
From digging in the forum it seems people are using Command Line to simply copy and backup their data which seems very unreasonable to me as i am far from being a linux command line guy.

Is there a simple way to copy data back and forth between NTFS and ZFS?
What is the best practice for doing incremental backups?
I presume this has already been asked and answered many times but i found CLI approaches that i would really like to avoid...

Thanks again,

Eli

 

[Mirfster]

So if i'll sum it up, in case of a hardware failure, let's say a dead motherboard, the minimal downtime will be if i happen to have a spare system or at least a spare MB that supports ECC memory etc that i can transfer my FreeNAS to.
Until i buy a new motherboard.
This solution cost money and takes time when i compare them to a failing RAID 1 array on NTFS. For example, i once had an m1015 who died on me. All i had to do is to plug the HDD's to the MB instead of the card and i had access to everything, no downtime at all.
That is something to consider indeed.

That is not a fair comparison. You are speaking of a faulty MB; which in any case (if you had a HBA or RAID Card) would result in the same thing... Having to replace the MB.

To make it fair say the HBA Card died, then you would simply just replace the HBA Card and you are back in business. Or if you had the free SATA ports on the MB, you could simply plug the drives directly to the MB and be back up and running as well.

As long a FreeNas has direct access to the drives it doesn't really care about the method it uses to get to them (SATA Port, HBA, even USB <--- NOT Recommended)...

Now to go even further, say you had a hardware Raid5, Raid6, etc.. How does your scenario work out then? It doesn't.... However with FreeNas it would be perfectly fine with RaidZ1, RaidZ2, etc.

Don't get me wrong Hardware Raid does have it places, but to me it pales in comparison to what FreeNas/ZFS is capable of.

 

[Eli Singer]

Good point. :)

Any ideas on the NTFS-ZFS backup workflow?

 

[Mirfster]

Options off the top of my head (none tested by me, but others may have better info):

• Rsync (Cron Job) from FreeNas to NTFS mounted share
  
• Scheduled "RoboCopy" Task from NTFS machine that is mapped to a FreeNas CIFS Share
  • Careful with the commands, don't think you want to have it copy security settings
• SyncThing (in FreeNas Plugins)
  
• Backula-SD (in FreeNas Plugins)

 

[danb35]

Any ideas on the NTFS-ZFS backup workflow?

It's going to be a matter of transferring the data over the network in any case, with innumerable ways to do it. You could set up a CIFS share on your FreeNAS box and use Windows Backup. You could install Urbackup on your FreeNAS server. You could use CrashPlan. You could probably use Bacula. If you're wanting to back up data from the FreeNAS box to a Windows box, you could again use CrashPlan, you could probably make Urbackup work, or just about any Windows software that will back up data from a network share to a local drive. The filesystem doesn't have anything to do with it.

 

[pirateghost]

Stop thinking in terms of zfs to NTFS transfer and start thinking in terms of transferring data over the network.

 

[Eli Singer]

I don't know any of these tools except CrashPlan.
I have my work cut out for me...
Thanks for the info!

Any comments on the build i'm thinking of?
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/eli_singer/saved/vtmnTW
here's a rundown here also:

Intel Xeon E3-1220 V5 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler
Supermicro MBD-X11SSH-LN4F Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Kingston ValueRAM 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case
SeaSonic 520W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular Fanless ATX Power Supply

 

[Ericloewe]

I don't know any of these tools except CrashPlan.
I have my work cut out for me...
Thanks for the info!

Any comments on the build i'm thinking of?
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/eli_singer/saved/vtmnTW
here's a rundown here also:

Intel Xeon E3-1220 V5 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler
Supermicro MBD-X11SSH-LN4F Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Kingston ValueRAM 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case
SeaSonic 520W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular Fanless ATX Power Supply

Cooler is unnecessary.
RAM is not on the QVL, which can be quite troublesome if it doesn't work at all or you have to contact Supermicro for some issue and they try to shift the blame to the RAM.
Motherboard is overkill, consider an X11SSM-F or X11SSH-F instead. CPU may be excessive, too, but that depends on the workload.
Finally, don't bother with fabless PSUs. They're not a very good idea.

 

[maglin]

Eli-slinger you need to read the FreeNAS manual and you will pick up a lot of the info you are currently lacking.

Once you understand that FreeNAS is just Network Attached Storage things will start to fall into place. Also read up on NFS and CIF shares to see which one is right for you.

I can guarantee that if you get the correct hardware and do some reading you will not only be happy but maybe catch the virus that many around here has. And by virus I mean how you all of a sudden are looking at HDDs to go on sale so you can expand your storage array or looking at more RAM cause it will make your system "better" in almost all cases.

I personally like the new skylake stuff along with the Xeon D CPUs. Kind of cheapish system with 64GB+ RAM capacity and a decently low power draw.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Eli Singer]

Cooler is unnecessary.
RAM is not on the QVL, which can be quite troublesome if it doesn't work at all or you have to contact Supermicro for some issue and they try to shift the blame to the RAM.
Motherboard is overkill, consider an X11SSM-F or X11SSH-F instead. CPU may be excessive, too, but that depends on the workload.
Finally, don't bother with fabless PSUs. They're not a very good idea.

What do you mean that the cooler unnecessary? I never heard of using a CPU without a cooler!

I wasn't aware is it important to go with recommended RAM for the MB. Supermicro's support is VERY limited according to their site.
3 modules are tested...
I know Hynix are being used by other brands but googling the part number didn't give me any hits on who uses this chips other than Hynix themselves...

About the MB, actually, it's pretty much on par price-wise with the suggestions you made and the specs looked (in a glance) very similar, so if the X11SSH-LN4F is an overkiil and it goes for the same price i don't see why not to go with it.

About Xeon D's, well, it is way more expensive than the Xeon E3 1220.

I guess what i want to know is if the build will work for the setup, if i'm not missing anything important, or if there's a better option for about the same price (or cheaper).

 

[Ericloewe]

What do you mean that the cooler unnecessary? I never heard of using a CPU without a cooler!

I mean you stick with the stock cooler that comes with the CPU.

 

[Eli Singer]

I mean you stick with the stock cooler that comes with the CPU.

Oh, I take issue with noise so my choice of a cooler is oriented towards it being silent as possible.
Hence the fanless PSU BTW :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Oh, I take issue with noise so my choice of a cooler is oriented towards it being silent as possible.
Hence the fanless PSU BTW :)

The stock cooler really isn't noisy. Since you need proper cooling for the disks anyway, those fans are going to drown out the stock cooler unless you run it at 100%. I'll note that it ran at 70-80% during Prime95 on my i3 4330, which is an unrealistically heavy workload that actively exercises the most power-hungry units on the CPU (AVX is damned expensive when it comes to power).

 

[pirateghost]

Yeah. You won't hear the CPU cooler. The stock cooler is not loud

 

[Eli Singer]

I'll equip the build with quiet fans also, not just the CPU cooler.
The fractal case is also silent oriented so that's my goal here, along with it being convenient to work with 8 drives and more.
But the important thing is the rig itself and the fans are secondary at best to our purpose here ;)