RAID 1 - Hardware or Software? UDF or ZFS

[Daisuke]

Actually I found a DS710+ less than 450 €, with 2*WESTERN DIGITAL - Caviar Green Power 3 Tb Sata III 6 Gb / s buffer 64 Mb 7200 rpm at 132 € each I will have a NAS with less than 750,00 € and a LAN RAID 1 continuos transfer rate little less than 95 MB/s on a Gigabit LAN capable of a theorical 125 MB/s maximum transfer rate.

I am perfectly in accordance with you if you say that I can not upgrade this system but, considering that the FreeNAS 8 version is still without iTunes server or Emule download capability and considering that this system has to be configured (and I am completely a newbie in FreeeNAS) I am not sure if I will reach the same performance and the same usability targets than a branded NAS.
This is my point.

Which is your transfer rate with your monsterNAS ?

I am of course available to discuss and to change my above mentioned statements.

But 750euro = 1000+$ USD :D

You should get easy 300+MB/sec with fairly old hardware. :)
In the video, he is using 4 WD20EARS on hardware RAID5. When 8.0.1 is released, I will try it both ways (hardware and software RAID) and see what performs better as my mobo has a hardware raid controller.

If I perform a full installation (i.e. in a dedicated small HD) is it possible to upgrade to FreeNAS 8 without lose data or configurations?

There is no upgrade from 7 to 8, the devs are working on it. You should start with 8.0.1 beta4, it supports upgrades through webGUI. Anything less, you will have to a clean install when you move to 8.0.1 version.

 

[ProtoSD]

TECH, the reason I suggested BravoYankee17 start with .7 is because it has the features he wants and is stable. The reason I suggested he wait until 8.1 (not 8.01) is so he could use the upgrade feature that is supposed to be there to let people upgrade from version .7 to version 8.1.

If you use the hardware RAID controller, you loose the benefit of being hardware independent, and the benefit of ZFS's features.

 

[BravoYankee17]

But 750euro = 1000+$ USD :D

You should get easy 300+MB/sec with fairly old hardware. :)

The point here is that Gigabit Lan is capable, maximum, of a transfer rate of 125 MB/s, so more than 300 MB/s are achievable only with SAS network.

Anyway I will try both 7 and 8 version, I am making tests so I can experiment whatever I want.

Thanks for your help and suggestions, I'll let you know for any issue.

 

[BravoYankee17]

NAS ready and ongoing but ...

Guys,

I easily reached to have my old PIII based NAS up and ready, anyway I would like to ask you which backup software do you use.
I am in a windows based enviroment.
I would like to have a simple copy of all files, like a CTRL+C CTRL-V and not a single proprierty file (i.e. Acronis, Windows Backup).

I reached a maximum write speed of 55 Mb/s (more or less 7 MB7s) for a 100 Mb LAN. Is this speed in the average or it is worst?

I read a previous reply in this thread with 300 MB/s (i.e. 2400 Mb/s) how could be possible? For a Gigabit LAN the maximum theorical throughput is 125 MB/s (1000 Mb/s).

 

[matthewowen01]

They mean 300MB/s internal, or in my case i have 2 nics and i can saturate 2GB/s each way for 4GB/s total.

 

[Daisuke]

matthewowen01, I have 2 NIC's on my NAS box also. How did you setup everything?
Right now I have a router with 8 ports, so I could assign 2 IP's for the box and have the cables connected into NIC's. I'm more interested what did you do on the FreeNAS software side. I need to have NAS serving files on both Windows and Linux, so I will use NFS shares in both cases. More exactly, I need to know how did you bond the 2 NIC's to hook into one share? I presume that is what you do... Thanks.

I would like to have a simple copy of all files, like a CTRL+C CTRL-V and not a single proprierty file (i.e. Acronis, Windows Backup).

There is a thread I started, related to this. Can you post the results there? Thanks.

 

[matthewowen01]

2 nics, 2ip's, i don't remember the exact setting but it's one of the arrogates.

Each is plugged into a seporate gig switch( which themselves are connected) then have my 2 high load systems on a diffeent switch.

 

[BravoYankee17]

They meancan 300MB/s internal, or in my case i have 2 nics and i can saturate 2GB/s each way for 4GB/s total.

So, you are saying that it is possible to have a LAN aggregation with FreeNAS 7 and 8?

 

[matthewowen01]

So, you are saying that it is possible to have a LAN aggregation with FreeNAS 7 and 8?

I used freenas7 on diffrent hardware so i do not know anything about link aggregation under that. 8 works great though.

 

[BravoYankee17]

Please, could you explain me how to configure dual Gigabit NICs link aggregation under FreeNAS 7? Thanks.

 

[matthewowen01]

I used freenas7 on diffrent hardware so i do not know anything about link aggregation under that. 8 works great though.

I have not done it under freenas7.

 

[KenNashua]

Why not use all 3 in a ZFS mirror?

About to take the jump from my Buffalo LinkStation to FreeNAS on a new rig.

I currently have a older 750GB, 1TB and 2TB drive so I'd like to put these into a 3-disk 750GB ZFS mirror and when the 750 dies (or it needs replacing, move up to 1TB or replace with 2x 2TB drives. The wiki docs for 8.0.3 indicate that Mirror is not an available option for N > 2 drives, but I've seen other blogs that indicate I can do a 3-disk mirror for increased read performance. Is this a wiki doc bug or is there a different way I have to add the 3rd disk?