Thoughts and comments on my FreeNAS Build - New to FreeNAS

[24Data]

Hello . to all
I am new to FreeNAS and the file system but not new to IT.
What I have now that I will replace with FreeNAS is two twins Thunderbolt NAS Machines 4x 3TB Raid 5 with a HotSwap = Each nets 6 Gig of space that is broken into 2 shares 1TB and 5TB and the other is 4TB and 2TB. A few reasons to replace are: 5 years old - I need to encrypt and fear that 5 year old drives will die on that process. OS and RAID are both proprietary out of Taiwan.

Not totally up to date on this file system but I know I want to use it. (Sorry may not be using the correct terms)

Question: Build 1

Using 8 x 3TB . all as one unit or group or pool with Z2 . (Raid 6 Type) Then divide the pool into the 4 Shares like I already use. (Doing RAID 6 Type because no Hot Spare Support)

Question: Build 2
Using 8 x 3 TB - This time divide the Hard Drives into two sets or Pools . Z2 using 4 x 3TB Each
Thinking perhaps better throughput between pools especially if I assign each to its own NIC

Hardware will be a FreeNAS Mini XL or a self build of the same specs . 32 RAM
Thanks in advance for any thoughts

 

[danb35]

Doing Raid 6 Type because no Hot Spare Support

What do you mean? FreeNAS has supported hot spares for years. RAIDZ2 is still generally a good idea, though.

Thinking perhaps better throughput between pools especially if I assign each to it's own NIC

There's no way to assign a pool to a NIC, and wouldn't be any sense in doing so anyway. Some services (I'm thinking particularly of NFS) can be assigned to listen on a specific IP, so that might accomplish what you're looking for--though if you have multiple NICs active, they need to either be part of a LAGG/LACP group or on different subnets.

 

[Stux]

Best performance when serving gigabit clients is accomplished by having the server be on 10gbe.

I’d go with the 8-way RaidZ2.

The mini xl or a self build is a good level of hardware for this.

 

[wblock]

Doing RAID 6 Type because no Hot Spare Support

FreeNAS does support hot spares, though.

 

[24Data]

What do you mean? FreeNAS has supported hot spares for years. RAIDZ2 is still generally a good idea, though.

There's no way to assign a pool to a NIC, and wouldn't be any sense in doing so anyway. Some services (I'm thinking particularly of NFS) can be assigned to listen on a specific IP, so that might accomplish what you're looking for--though if you have multiple NICs active, they need to either be part of a LAGG/LACP group or on different subnets.

Thanks for your comments and information. This is why I posted to get the most current info.

 

[24Data]

Best performance when serving gigabit clients is accomplished by having the server be on 10gbe.

I’d go with the 8-way RaidZ2.

The mini xl or a self build is a good level of hardware for this.

Great - Thanks for the comment and info....