I'm new to FreeNAS and have been doing a lot of reading and research as well as spending quite some time
reading the forums. I feel that I have a good, basic understanding of FreeNas.
My plan is to build a FreeNas box to for home media (movies, music, etc) as well as system backup images,
backups of software code (I'm a software developer) and general file sharing. My plan is to have 4x 3TB hard disks (WD Red), but was a bit confused about the type of pool to build.
My two scenarios are:
A) Two vdevs, each with two 3Tb drives mirrored, then stripe the 2 mirrors. Total Cap. = 6Tb. Drive loss ability = 2 (but only one from each vdev)
B) One vdev, 4x 3Tb drives in RAID Z2. Total Cap. = 6Tb. Drive loss ability = 2
After reading the risks of RAIDZ1, I eliminated that from consideration since data redundancy is very important for me.
Each of the options above provide the same total capacity. From my understanding of RAID configurations, option B has is a bit more resilient in that it can sustain a loss of any two drives without data loss, whereas option A can sustain a loss of two drives, but only if they are in different vdevs. Since both arrangements have the same capacity option B would seem the better choice.
Am I correct in my thinking?
As I understand things option A has better performance, but I was willing to give up some performance for redundancy. Is the performance increase of a striped mirror so significant vs RAIDZ2 that I should go that route? In other words, am I being too overly cautious about losing two drives resulting in giving up significant performance?
I'm hoping I'm not being to "open-ended" with these questions.
Any thoughts are most appreciated.
Thanks,
Peter
reading the forums. I feel that I have a good, basic understanding of FreeNas.
My plan is to build a FreeNas box to for home media (movies, music, etc) as well as system backup images,
backups of software code (I'm a software developer) and general file sharing. My plan is to have 4x 3TB hard disks (WD Red), but was a bit confused about the type of pool to build.
My two scenarios are:
A) Two vdevs, each with two 3Tb drives mirrored, then stripe the 2 mirrors. Total Cap. = 6Tb. Drive loss ability = 2 (but only one from each vdev)
B) One vdev, 4x 3Tb drives in RAID Z2. Total Cap. = 6Tb. Drive loss ability = 2
After reading the risks of RAIDZ1, I eliminated that from consideration since data redundancy is very important for me.
Each of the options above provide the same total capacity. From my understanding of RAID configurations, option B has is a bit more resilient in that it can sustain a loss of any two drives without data loss, whereas option A can sustain a loss of two drives, but only if they are in different vdevs. Since both arrangements have the same capacity option B would seem the better choice.
Am I correct in my thinking?
As I understand things option A has better performance, but I was willing to give up some performance for redundancy. Is the performance increase of a striped mirror so significant vs RAIDZ2 that I should go that route? In other words, am I being too overly cautious about losing two drives resulting in giving up significant performance?
I'm hoping I'm not being to "open-ended" with these questions.
Any thoughts are most appreciated.
Thanks,
Peter