RAID and redundancy questions | Pre-Install

[nullReference]

I am in the process of building a FreeNAS box and want to make sure I have all my "ducks in a row" before hand. I was originally going to go with an onboard hardware raid 5 solution but the more I read about FreeNAS and ZFS I'm not sure if that's the route I wish to take anymore, hints this post.

When I first started researching I was going to go with a dedicated raid controller card because if there was ever an issue with the motherboard I could replace the motherboard and my data would be unaffected (or at least recoverable). RAID 5 was chosen because I liked the idea of being able to hot swap a failed drive with a new one and have it re-propagated automatically.

As time went on however I decided to use the onboard raid controller in a RAID 5 setup and chance the issue of motherboard failure. But then after a bit more research I heard of some people running a software RAID configuration through FreeNAS that was comparable to a hardware RAID 5. The specs for the machine that I am building are as follows:

>Gigabyte AMD 970 mobo (supports onboard RAID 0/1/5/10)
>AMD Sempron 2.8ghz (will be unlocking 2nd core)
>4gb 1333mhz DDR3
>3 1tb sata 3 drives

Knowing these specs my question is then which solution would be the best as far as ease of replacement if something were to fail. Say I have a motherboard failure and require the replacement of the board, what would be the pros/cons of hardware vs software in this situation?Redundancy is more important to me at this point then performance and taking into account that this box will only be used by me to store critical business files, speed is not my greatest concern.


Any thoughts and opinions on this are greatly appreciated!

 

[ZFS Noob]

Read this first. Then come back here.

I have a number of thoughts here, and rather than muddle things up I'll just ask: why are you looking at FreeNAS?

If the answer is "because I want simple network storage" then:

• There's an older version of FreeNAS that's still alive called NAS4Free. It will work better with the amount of memory you want to purchase, and if you like hardware RAID (and there are good reasons to favor hardware RAID) then just use NAS4Free to format your RAID volume with the UFS filesystem, share it, done.
• If going this route, make sure you're buying a motherboard with a real RAID controller. Lots of them aren't, and you'll be unhappy if you find you've got a piece of hardware that only really works with Windows.
• Go with more drives - 1 more drive gets you RAID10 or RAID6. Both are better choices.

If the answer is "because ZFS looks awesome, and FreeNAS looks like the way I want to implement it," then:

• Get more memory. The more the better. But at least get the minimum.
• Don't use hardware RAID. Let FreeNAS do that.
• Go with RAID1, RAID10, or RAIDZ2. Don't use RAID5/RAIDZ. Just don't.