Storage setup for future expansion

[anhlon]

Hi All,

I've been playing with FreeNAS in Virtualbox and is about to install it on the an old pc that I have (i7-930, 24gb ram, 3x2TB, 1 120gb ssd). I will be using this freenas instance to serve media files and general storage for home use. These media files are disposable, I could care less if I lose them. Now, I do have family photos that are well not replacable and need a redundant backup. My current backup plan w/o freenas right now
1. photos on a dedicated drive on the pc
2. drive in #1 is sync to an external hd on a weekly basis
3. backblaze to backup the photos on the drive

with freenas, I will have to cancel backblaze and go with crashplan. So, with this my plan is as follows;
1. get another external hd
2. move all the media to external hd
3. setup freenas using RAIDZ1 2x1
4. use the SSD as a cache drive
5. move the data from external back
6. setup crash plan and everything else that i want

Now, there are a few concerns, the quality of the drive and the amount of drive that I currently have. Since, I am on a budget (read wife doesn't let me buy more stuff :P ) I want to replace them in a few months to expand the pool. My questions are;
1. it should be easy to get another 3x?TB and create "pool2" correct? then copy the photos to this pool and repoint crashplan here
2. in the event that i want to grow/replace "pool1", i can replace 1 at a time with a larger size (but I won't see the new size until all 3 have been replaced) is this safe?

Ultimately, I will have 6x?TB, what is the safest way of getting there. Any tips/suggestions? Anything that I am missing?

Thanks!

 

[snaptec]

3)
Raidz1 needs 3 disks AND if you care about your Data, use raidz2.
4. ssd cache maybe wont even help.

B2. That correct. You need to replace all small drives
Does your Hardware Support ecc?


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[danb35]

Does your Hardware Support ecc?

Not with an i7 CPU it doesn't.

 

[Stux]

I would suggest using the SSD as s boot disk.

3 drives seems like a good fit with raidz1.

If you get 3 more 2TB drives, that'd be a good fit for 6-way raidz2, but I wouldn't recommend any further investing in 2TB drives.

An alternative is mirrors. With mirrors you can grow your storage two drives at a time, but you lose 50% to redundancy, which is excessive for data you don't care if you lose.

 

[anhlon]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[anhlon]

I have just one more question.

Will this upgrade path for more storage work?
1. use 3x2TB at the moment
2. update the pool by using larger capacity drives, say 3x4TB - switch them out one by one till all are replaced to realize new capacity
3. when budge allows, pick up another set of 3x4TB
4. this new set will need to be created as a new vdev
5. extend the volume so that it stripes against the 2 identical pool which will give me double capacity over what I currently have?

Would the SSD that I have better serve as a single volume for jails? I mean I don't intend to put a ton of stress on it, 1 jail per couchpotato, transmission, sonarr, owncloud, plex, rclone --- 6 very small jails, rclone jail's job is to take all my family photo and upload to amazon cloud on a nightly basis.

 

[Stux]

You could do that, but you'd end up with 2 3 way raidz1 pools made of 4TB drives.

Raidz1 is not recommended generally for larger than 1TB drives because of the risk of failure during a rebuild.

6x4TB drives is perfect for making into anRaidz2.

In this scenario I would consider using some shenanigans to either convert your 3x2TB raidz1 into a 6x2TB raidz2 (using 4TB disks)

Or use 2TB partitions across the 3 4TB disks to setup a 6 disks raidz2. This will give you as the same space as a 3 disk raidz1, but when you have all your disks you can replace partitions and expand the pool.