RAIDZ2, 3 or mirrors for media server?

[av8r]

I'm setting up my new FreeNAS box and have been reading everything I can consume, watching videos, etc and I'm while I think I understand that there is a performance hit as you add parity, I'm not sure it's applicable to the performance requirements for my situation. I have 5 X 2tb drives (I actually have 6, but I want to import a volume from an older, failed FreeNAS box and only have 6 SATA ports on the mobo so I think I'm stuck leaving one port unused, hence 5 X 2tb) and this box will be used mainly for Plex, some windows data storage and maybe some photo archives from my Mac. I guess the question is will I see much of a difference in performance between RAIDZ2, 3 or a set of mirrors when we usually have just one instance streaming from the NAS?

I can't see us ever needing more than 2T of storage as our current datastore is around 800Gb and there's at least 30% of that that can be removed.

I'm leaning towards RAIDZ3 for the redundancy, but am open to the more experienced of you to chime in.

For reference, my previous box was a 6-7 yr old desktop with a single 2T drive in it and we never saw any issues with streaming, etc. The new box is exponentially more powerful so I'm guessing this is a moot point.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[nojohnny101]

I guess the question is will I see much of a difference in performance between RAIDZ2, 3 or a set of mirrors when we usually have just one instance streaming from the nas?

In your situation, I would say no. Your demands are very light and I don't think you'll notice a difference, especially since you are not using 10Gbe. You just need to decide on what type of redundancy you want. Raidz2 is usually what people recommend because it is a good balance between performance and storage lost to parity. If however, you are very paranoid or for whatever reason you need maximum redundancy, go with raidz3. I do not see you benefiting from mirrors and would not recommend for your setup and usage.

Are you planning on keeping that 1 drive pool once you import it? Is that just a temporary stop gap to get your data off of it? It would be ideal if you have somewhere else to store you data, then create 6 drive raidz2.

Also please note, using raidzx is NOT a substitute for a proper backup solution.

Good luck.

 

[av8r]

In your situation, I would say no. Your demands are very light and I don't think you'll notice a difference, especially since you are not using 10Gbe. You just need to decide on what type of redundancy you want. Raidz2 is usually what people recommend because it is a good balance between performance and storage lost to parity. If however, you are very paranoid or for whatever reason you need maximum redundancy, go with raidz3. I do not see you benefiting from mirrors and would not recommend for your setup and usage.

Are you planning on keeping that 1 drive pool once you import it? Is that just a temporary stop gap to get your data off of it? It would be ideal if you have somewhere else to store you data, then create 6 drive raidz2.

Also please note, using raidzx is NOT a substitute for a proper backup solution.

Good luck.

Thanks for the concise reply.

I will not maintain the 1 drive pool. It's going to get chucked. I just want to get the data off it and it seems the best way is to import it, CP or RYSNC and then remove it. If there's a way for me to use all 6 drives in this scenario I'm all ears.

Thanks

 

[Stux]

Install the drive in another machine and copy the data to the NAS over the network.

Slower. But you'look be able to build a 6-way Raidz2, which really is ideal.

 

[av8r]

Install the drive in another machine and copy the data to the NAS over the network.

Slower. But you'look be able to build a 6-way Raidz2, which really is ideal.

Thanks. Just for my clarity, "ideal" means best of all worlds? I can't imagine ever using that much storage (8T I think?) But I think it'll give me 2 drives for parity, yes?

If I don't have another freenas box to plug the single drive into to get the data can it be read with a USB to SATA adapter on a mac or windows box just to copy the stuff I want off it?

Thanks!

 

[gpsguy]

Stux was suggesting that you connect the single drive to your Windows or Mac and copy the data from FreeNAS to it. Then you'd be able to read it on a non-FreeNAS system.

Current versions of FreeNAS only use ZFS. If you put the single drive on your server, you wouldn't be able to read with Windows.

If I don't have another freenas box to plug the single drive into to get the data can it be read with a USB to SATA adapter on a mac or windows box just to copy the stuff I want off it?

 

[av8r]

Stux was suggesting that you connect the single drive to your Windows or Mac and copy the data from FreeNAS to it. Then you'd be able to read it on a non-FreeNAS system.

Current versions of FreeNAS only use ZFS. If you put the single drive on your server, you wouldn't be able to read with Windows.

Sorry for the confusion, but if it was a ZFS pool before (single drive) I think you're telling me it *won't* be readable by windows or a Mac, yes? I'm sure that's how it was setup prior in my 9.3 freenas box.

 

[gpsguy]

You're not confused, *I* am.

Yes, you won't be able to read the ZFS formatted disk with Windows. I'm not a Mac guy, so I can't answer that.

How are you handling backups now? If you can backup your current data to something else on your network, you can then nuke the single drive, create a 6 disk RAIDz2 volume, and restore the data.

If you don't have a backup, I'd be leave the 2TB drive in the server (as a separate volume), create your new 5 disk RAIDz2 volume and transfer the data from the single drive volume to the new volume.

Once the "old" 2TB disk was freed up, you could re-use that disk as part of your backup strategy. You might want to hang it off one of your client machines and synchronize data to it. Should your FreeNAS server fail, you might have easier access to some of your critical data (like photo archives).

Four+ years ago, I ran into problems with my FreeNAS server. Since I had been synchronizing the data to a USB drive hanging off my Windows machine, I was able to limp along for several months using the backup, until I had time to address the server issue.

Sorry for the confusion, but if it was a ZFS pool before (single drive) I think you're telling me it *won't* be readable by windows or a Mac, yes?

 

[av8r]

You're not confused, *I* am.

Yes, you won't be able to read the ZFS formatted disk with Windows. I'm not a Mac guy, so I can't answer that.

How are you handling backups now? If you can backup your current data to something else on your network, you can then nuke the single drive, create a 6 disk RAIDz2 volume, and restore the data.

If you don't have a backup, I'd be leave the 2TB drive in the server (as a separate volume), create your new 5 disk RAIDz2 volume and transfer the data from the single drive volume to the new volume.

Once the "old" 2TB disk was freed up, you could re-use that disk as part of your backup strategy. You might want to hang it off one of your client machines and synchronize data to it. Should your FreeNAS server fail, you might have easier access to some of your critical data (like photo archives).

Four+ years ago, I ran into problems with my FreeNAS server. Since I had been synchronizing the data to a USB drive hanging off my Windows machine, I was able to limp along for several months using the backup, until I had time to address the server issue.

ok, that makes me feel a little better (or worse depending on the context) I don't have a current backup (ya, I know) so I'm in need of the drive's content. I'd prefer to use all 6 drives so I'll setup another freenas box and pop the old drive in and hope I can get the data off it.

Thanks again for the clarity. It's all coming back to me (lol)

 

[SweetAndLow]

zfs mostly works on Mac, linux, bsd. The only OS it doesn't work on is windows.

 

[Stux]

You could play musical chairs ;)

Partition 3 drives into 1TB Partitions. Build a 6 way Raidz2 from the 1TB partitions. Leaving 3 Sata ports.

ZFS replicate the existing single drive pool to the new pool.

Then replace all the partitions with 2TB drives one (or 2) at a time.

When you finish you'll have an 8TB pool with double disk redundancy. This is a really good place to be.

*if* you ever did need more space you could replace the 2TB drives with 4, 6 or 8TB drives etc.

 

[av8r]

You could play musical chairs ;)

Partition 3 drives into 1TB Partitions. Build a 6 way Raidz2 from the 1TB partitions. Leaving 3 Sata ports.

ZFS replicate the existing single drive pool to the new pool.

Then replace all the partitions with 2TB drives one (or 2) at a time.

When you finish you'll have an 8TB pool with double disk redundancy. This is a really good place to be.

*if* you ever did need more space you could replace the 2TB drives with 4, 6 or 8TB drives etc.

I'm going to try something equally difficult. Freenas in Virtualbox on my macbook pro, then attach the old drive to the macbook and try to rsync.

it's not gonna work... is it...? :P

 

[Stux]

I'm going to try something equally difficult. Freenas in Virtualbox on my macbook pro, then attach the old drive to the macbook and try to rsync.

it's not gonna work... is it...? :p

It might work, but how are you going to create a 6 way RaidZ2 on your NAS box?

The approach I'm advocating is actualy fairly simple, it just sounds complicated. Assuming you have 6 ports available and 6 bays in your NAS box, just install all the drives...

partition one of the drives into 2 partitions... then create a 6 way Z2 with 4 drives and the 2 partitions from the 5th drive. Copy stuff from the 6th drive to the pool (it will be 4TB).

Then replace one of the partitions with the 6th drive. Then offline the other partition, and replace it with the whole partitioned drive.

It will expand to 8TB.

Done :)

And you'll never lose redundancy during the process. The only risky part is when you're replacing the last partition, and you'll still have a whole disk of redundancy during that step.

The trick is 1) partitioning the drive and 2) manaully creating a zpool from the partitions.

In fact, because you're *only* resilvering <2TB, it will go quite quickly. And you won't even have any problems with unbalanced data

It'd be worth doing a full burnin test on the 5 drives before commencing. And also on the 6th disk, after copying it to the burnin tested pool.

 

[av8r]

It might work, but how are you going to create a 6 way RaidZ2 on your NAS box?

The approach I'm advocating is actualy fairly simple, it just sounds complicated. Assuming you have 6 ports available and 6 bays in your NAS box, just install all the drives...

partition one of the drives into 2 partitions... then create a 6 way Z2 with 4 drives and the 2 partitions from the 5th drive. Copy stuff from the 6th drive to the pool (it will be 4TB).

Then replace one of the partitions with the 6th drive. Then offline the other partition, and replace it with the whole partitioned drive.

It will expand to 8TB.

Done :)

And you'll never lose redundancy during the process. The only risky part is when you're replacing the last partition, and you'll still have a whole disk of redundancy during that step.

The trick is 1) partitioning the drive and 2) manaully creating a zpool from the partitions.

In fact, because you're *only* resilvering <2TB, it will go quite quickly. And you won't even have any problems with unbalanced data

It'd be worth doing a full burnin test on the 5 drives before commencing. And also on the 6th disk, after copying it to the burnin tested pool.

So is there a published process that is recommended for burning in? I've run the box for a couple days now, but I'm not familiar with software to do so on a box with no OS.

Thanks for this. While I work in IT, my role has developed into a security focus which has removed me from the technical aspect of IT so this is fun, but takes me a bit to wrap my head around it.

 

[Stux]

[How To] Hard Drive Burn-In Testing

 

[av8r]

[How To] Hard Drive Burn-In Testing

Thanks. I was building and destroying volumes and datasets to help me understand what they look like and work out the drives a bit etc.

 

[fta]

I'd create a pool of 2 mirrors, copy the data to that, then add a third mirror to use all 6 disks. I'd then backup the 800GB to Backblaze B2 for $4 a month. It wouldn't even require a second freenas box.

EDIT: Actually, I wouldn't even do that. I'd put all 6 drives in the new box and mirror the existing drive. Then I'd add two more mirrors to use all 6 drives. Wouldn't even have to copy the data manually.

 

[av8r]

I'd create a pool of 2 mirrors, copy the data to that, then add a third mirror to use all 6 disks. I'd then backup the 800GB to Backblaze B2 for $4 a month. It wouldn't even require a second freenas box.

Thanks. Mirrors are something I'm considering. I see there is a Crashplan plugin also. I've used CP for years, but not on FN. I'd prefer to not have another backup destination so maybe I can use CP for my FN instance as well?

 

[fta]

Thanks. Mirrors are something I'm considering. I see there is a Crashplan plugin also. I've used CP for years, but not on FN. I'd prefer to not have another backup destination so maybe I can use CP for my FN instance as well?

A lot of people use CP on freenas. I used to, but it's unsupported (by CP), is constantly breaking, and one time when I went it to fix it, CP just up and deleted my entire backup, which takes a month to upload. Personally, I'm sticking with something I know is reliable.

 

[av8r]

A lot of people use CP on freenas. I used to, but it's unsupported (by CP), is constantly breaking, and one time when I went it to fix it, CP just up and deleted my entire backup, which takes a month to upload. Personally, I'm sticking with something I know is reliable.

good to know. I hadn't gotten that far to find the negative reports.