Suggestion for harddrive combination

[chbla]

Hi there,

Short story: I'm using Windows for Photoshop/Lightroom and RAW Photo processing and currently have a Raid 1 setup in the same computer.
I currently have 2x2TB WD Red and 2x4TB HGST Deskstar. Although they are said to be very reliable, one HGST drive failed completely after 1 month
and the other one is only recognized if I use and external USB3 adapter.

I want to take this opportunity and replace the internal RAID with a freenas server (currently thinking of a Proliant Gen8, if anyone has a better
option in the same (low) price class, let me know).

My question is: What should I do with my drives. As written above I have 2x2TB and 1x4TB (as the second failed). And I'm unsure if it makes
sense buy a 4TB hgst again and be able to use 2x2 + 2x4 if that's possible or only use the 2x2 and replace them later with more, or... no idea what the possible setups are..

I'm targetting RaidZ - can anyone give me a quick hint on what makes most sense?

Thanks a lot,
Christoph

 

[Glorious1]

You don't seem to have good options with your current set of drives. Most importantly, you should be aware of this, from the user guide:

ZFS vdevs, groups of disks that act like a single device, can be created using disks of different sizes. However, the capacity available on each disk is limited to the same capacity as the smallest disk in the group. For example, a vdev with one 2 TB and two 4 TB disks will only be able to use 2 TB of space on each disk. In general, use disks that are the same size for the best space usage and performance.

So if you mix those 3 (or 4) drives in one vdev, FreeNAS will only use 2 TB of each drive. If you make 2 vdevs in your pool, one 2 x 2 TB and one 2 x 4 TB, that will work, but you're losing about half your space to redundancy (I think). So you would be better off here with drives of uniform size.

If you don't want to buy all new drives, I would go with with one vdev, 2 x 2 TB. If you later acquire a replacement 4 TB, you could create a 2nd vdev, 2 x 4 TB, and add it to the pool. But I would still want to have backup drives in case of failure.

 

[chbla]

You don't seem to have good options with your current set of drives. Most importantly, you should be aware of this, from the user guide:

So if you mix those 3 (or 4) drives in one vdev, FreeNAS will only use 2 TB of each drive. If you make 2 vdevs in your pool, one 2 x 2 TB and one 2 x 4 TB, that will work, but you're losing about half your space to redundancy (I think). So you would be better off here with drives of uniform size.

If you don't want to buy all new drives, I would go with with one vdev, 2 x 2 TB. If you later acquire a replacement 4 TB, you could create a 2nd vdev, 2 x 4 TB, and add it to the pool. But I would still want to have backup drives in case of failure.

Thank's a lot for your reply, I expected the options to be like that.
I think in this case I will do as you suggest, 2x2TB mirrored and then add 2x4TB once I have the new drive. I'm planning to use a Proliant Gen8 for it, right now they are really cheap.

How did you mean "But I would still want to have backup drives in case of failure."? In which combination/setup?

 

[Glorious1]

How did you mean "But I would still want to have backup drives in case of failure."? In which combination/setup?

Maybe it's just me, but I like to have a backup drive on hand, all tested and burned in, in case one goes bad. In your case, if you had only one backup drive, it would have to be 4 GB. If you did that, and used it to replace a 2 GB drive, I'm not sure if you could later replace that with a 2 GB drive. Maybe someone else knows.

 

[chbla]

Maybe it's just me, but I like to have a backup drive on hand, all tested and burned in, in case one goes bad. In your case, if you had only one backup drive, it would have to be 4 GB. If you did that, and used it to replace a 2 GB drive, I'm not sure if you could later replace that with a 2 GB drive. Maybe someone else knows.

Ah you mean in the sense of a spare drive - yes that of course makes sense!
I'll order the Proliant Gen8 - unless something speaks against using it for my purpose :)

 

[gpsguy]

When Gen8 (CPU wize) are you planning to buy?

I'll order the Proliant Gen8 - unless something speaks against using it for my purpose

 

[chbla]

I wanted to start with the default, (Gen8, G1610T, 1P, 4 GB-U, B120i, SATA-Server) - Celeron. While not being the most powerful one I read that it is sufficient for my needs, I don't have planned anything else on this machine than using it for photo storage.

 

[chbla]

When Gen8 (CPU wize) are you planning to buy?

@gpsguy, anything speaking against that?

 

[gpsguy]

Possibly, but since you *could* upgrade the CPU after the fact, I'd say try it out. One thing you'll need to do is upgrade the RAM to at least 8GB. At a minimum, I'd buy an 8GB stick of ECC RAM, or a matched set of two if you can afford it.

@gpsguy, anything speaking against that?

 

[chbla]

Possibly, but since you *could* upgrade the CPU after the fact, I'd say try it out. One thing you'll need to do is upgrade the RAM to at least 8GB. At a minimum, I'd buy an 8GB stick of ECC RAM, or a matched set of two if you can afford it.

Thank you very much - just out of interest, what would be the consequence of not having enough CPU or more interestingly RAM? I mean, when is an upgrade particularly important or what are the effects?

 

[gpsguy]

For RAM, see http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/intro.html#ram.

While the guide may say that 8GB is recommended, most of the prolific forum members would say that it's a requirement, based on forum participation and seeing user problems on systems with less than 8GB. Problems might include the webGUI misbehaving and/or problems with the pool up to and including data loss.

Since the maximum amount of memory you can put in a Gen 8 is 16GB and you only have 2 slots, your best option (IMHO) is to use 8GB sticks. If you buy an additional 4GB stick now and need to upgrade later, you'll have to put at least one of your 4GB sticks on the shelf.

CPU wise, you might run into performance issues. I don't know how Lightroom will perform (I own v3, but never installed it. Why?, I don't remember). But, you can work on that problem after the fact, by replacing the CPU.

Unfortunately, there aren't many low price server solutions using this form factor.

Thank you very much - just out of interest, what would be the consequence of not having enough CPU or more interestingly RAM?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Lightroom works best when the active/current catalog is on the local machine's SSD, @chbla. If that is the case, having the photos themselves on remote storage - even slow, remote storage - is fine. (You'll probably even be fine with the catalog on remote storage but not nearly as happy.)

With 16GB RAM in the FreeNAS server, I think you'll be fine even with the lower end processor.

How much disk space are you currently using? I'm going to be the contrarian here and suggest you start with a pair of 4TB drives (or 6TB) in the server. It'll make migration easier (build server, copy files from internal mirror to FreeNAS server), give you room to grow (four slots in the server isn't a lot) and you'll have a quality local backup during the transition period. When it's time to expand, build another mirrored VDEV and add it to the the existing volume.

I'm a photographer and, in a previous career, was the IT manager who oversaw a newspaper's photo archive. Experience tells me that photo storage isn't a straight line. Every generation of camera increases file size by a factor of four.; it is not linear growth.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[chbla]

Thank you guys.

I'll get an additional a 8GB Ram, does it make sense to add to the 4 to have 12 or is it counterproductive if it's 2 different ones with freenas?

@MatthewSteinhoff, the current plan is to have a local "working" dir for lightroom/ps, but have the catalog span across the local as well as the freenas dir so I can move in between them.
I think that should be possible..

The reason to start with 2x2TB is that I have 2x2TB and 1x4TB drives at the moment. I think if I start with 2x2 I should be able to add the additional 2x4 later, is this right?
The space would be sufficient at the moment, but I'll move/cleanup this weekend and see how much is left.

You're right with the photo size yeah, that's a huge difference with a new camera. I also need to be more strict on deleting images, I have too much redundant ones around.

 

[gpsguy]

Just be conservative in shooting like the old film days. I have a couple of large format cameras, 2.25x3.25 and 4x5 at home. :)

 

[chbla]

Would the Kingston ValueRAM DIMM Kit 16GB, DDR3-1333, CL9, ECC (KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G) be sufficient?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Just be conservative in shooting like the old film days.

Old Man Yells at Clouds Tangent:

I could always tell the staff photographers who had spent most of their career shooting film and those who were primarily digital. The guys who used to shoot film would come back from a college football game with 200-300 photos. The guys who came up as digital-only shooters would come back with full CF cards - 500-700 photos easily. Looking just at the number of photos delivered, I could just about tell you what size CF card they had in the camera.

I *HATED* when we moved up a generation in cameras. I HATED when we bought larger CF cards. Each of those events meant massive storage upgrades. Twenty photographers multiplied by four assignments a day multiplied by primary storage plus replicated storage plus backup storage plus archival storage. All at a time when 9-GB SCSI drives were $800 each and 400-tape DLT libraries were still a thing.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[chbla]

I just read that the Kingston are not the first choice here, but the Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B 240-pin DIMM-Module 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3 PC3-12800 ECC Unbuff would be better

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

if I start with 2x2 I should be able to add the additional 2x4 later, is this right?

Yes, that's correct.

 

[chbla]

So the last question for hardware: Would you go for the Crucial or Kingston kit above? I see it's quite controversial

 

[gpsguy]

Crucial!