BUILD Transferring System: Looking for best method

[pwnerman]

First off thanks for the help,

For a good while now I have been running FreeNAS on a bare metal R710 with 6x 3.5in HDDs. This was fine for most of the time I have had it since I was using Plex through the plugin so I was taking advantage of the CPU's. Well now I have moved Plex off the FreeNAS server into my new VM server so I'm kinda wasting a ton of electric (160ish watts) running 6 hard drives. So this is where my question lies. What is my best course of action here. Would I be better off getting a larger (more disks) server that would hopefully be lower power or would I be better off getting a low power server and using that as a host machine while direct connecting it to a jbod unit like the Lenovo SA120?

Also I have some questions regarding moving systems. How exactly would this work? Would I simply download the config file I have backed up everyday, install FreeNAS onto the new system and transplant the drives? Would those drives need to be in any particular order or whatnot?

Thanks for the clarification and help

 

[Basil Hendroff]

That depends. What size disks are we talking about? What's your ZFS configuration? How big is the volume? How much data are we talking about? How do you currently back it up? At the end of the day, it's all about the data, so the strategy you adopt will depend on environmental factors, which remain unclear atm.

 

[pwnerman]

That depends. What size disks are we talking about? What's your ZFS configuration? How big is the volume? How much data are we talking about? How do you currently back it up? At the end of the day, it's all about the data, so the strategy you adopt will depend on environmental factors, which remain unclear atm.

It's a single Raid Z2 with 6x 4TB HDD's. Ive used 6TB of it. That's all I have, the raid is the backup. Yes I know that isn't good but can't afford another system to make a copy.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Also I have some questions regarding moving systems. How exactly would this work? Would I simply download the config file I have backed up everyday, install FreeNAS onto the new system and transplant the drives? Would those drives need to be in any particular order or whatnot?

This post suggests that the disk order does not matter. It would be wise to label the disks (I'm assuming they're in hot-swap bays) on a visible section with their serial numbers. It makes it much easier to identify a faulty drive down the track, but also allows you to move disks in order if you're more comfortable doing this. See this post.

It is a trivial exercise moving systems. However, it's really only trivial if you have a fallback i.e. a backup. This post will be useful. Note the multiple references to backup.

 

[pwnerman]

This post suggests that the disk order does not matter. It would be wise to label the disks (I'm assuming they're in hot-swap bays) on a visible section with their serial numbers. It makes it much easier to identify a faulty drive down the track, but also allows you to move disks in order if you're more comfortable doing this. See this post.

It is a trivial exercise moving systems. However, it's really only trivial if you have a fallback i.e. a backup. This post will be useful. Note the multiple references to backup.

Yes I would of course need to make a backup, even if it's a crappy one on external hdds. I already have my serials and locations listed on my current system so I know about that go I'm good there.

As for your last link it seems I have everything covered besides the extra backups.

But do you have any suggestions on the hardware route I should take? Should I go the low power host system with direct attach storage or should I look into an all in one server with more disk capacity and hopefully low power processors. It's just I want to keep FreeNAS on bare metal while at the same time wanting to keep it low powered since I'm not using the CPU's for anything

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Well now I have moved Plex off the FreeNAS server into my new VM server s

I assume from this, you're not using a FreeNAS VM, so you are not really worried about the FreeNAS CPUs supporting VMs in the future? Are you intending to use FreeNAS as a file/media server only?

 

[pwnerman]

I assume from this, you're not using a FreeNAS VM, so you don't really worried about the FreeNAS CPUs supporting VMs in the future? Are you intending to use FreeNAS as a file/media server only?

Yes I'm not using FreeNAS virtualized and I don't want too since it isn't recommended. I would like to stay within the server space for a future system. I know I can build a PC but that isn't necessary or desired. So yes pretty much I just want the FreeNAS system to host files on a bare metal device. My VM server has Plex on it so that will handle all the heavy lifting

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Sorry, I wasn't clear in my post. I understand you've got a bare metal FreeNAS system. What I meant to ask was 'Are you not using/considering FreeNAS virtual machines to host other systems now or in the future?' I gather from your response, you are using something else for your VMs.

 

[pwnerman]

Sorry, I wasn't clear in my post. I understand you've got a bare metal FreeNAS system. What I meant to ask was 'Are you not using/considering FreeNAS virtual machines to host other systems now or in the future?' I gather from your response, you are using something else for your VMs.

People actually use FreeNAS VM's? I don't think I have ever heard a single person recommend using them. I know they are their and I appreciate them being there but I think a dedicated host software like Xenserver or ESXI is a preferable choice. That is just what I have gathered from people talking. That is not an expert opinion of mine.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

I haven't dabbled (yet) with FreeNAS VMs. I'm about to, to see what all the fuss is about. Anyway, just be aware that your choice of processor (if you're thinking of a new system) will either keep this option open or close it for you. Refer to this section of the FreeNAS guide.

Would I be better off getting a larger (more disks) server

Will you be reusing the existing disks? If so, just be aware you can't add/remove disks to an existing ZFS volume. You can only grow the volume by replacing all the physical disks with larger capacity disks. Check this post.

 

[pwnerman]

I haven't dabbled (yet) with FreeNAS VMs. I'm about to, to see what all the fuss is about. Anyway, just be aware that your choice of processor (if you're thinking of a new system) will either keep this option open or close it for you. Refer to this section of the FreeNAS guide.



Will you be reusing the existing disks? If so, just be aware you can't add/remove disks to an existing ZFS volume. You can only grow the volume by replacing all the physical disks with larger capacity disks. Check this post.

In this case I might not reuse the disks anyway and use them after for a backup system but yes I know how the volumes work, thanks though for the reminder. Also it seems if you have anything within the last decade has those requirements even though I don't plan on using FreeNAS VM's.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

I think you've pretty much answered your own question now. New system, larger capacity disks, processor(s) with VM option. Use your existing system for backup.

Set up replication and snapshots. This is pretty much the path I took and haven't looked back. With large datastores, an effective backup strategy is essential. Redundancy is not a replacement for a backup.

Tip #1: There will probably be a mismatch between the capacities of your backup and primary FreeNAS systems, with the backup being the lower capacity system. Just be aware ZFS takes a performance hit at 80% capacity. More info here. What I'm implying here is, let's say your primary vol capacity is 10TB and your backup vol is 8TB. As long as you don't mind taking a performance hit on the backup system, you'll be able to adequately backup 80% of the capacity of the primary vol before performance considerations for the primary server kick in.

Tip #2: If low power is a consideration, stick to WD Red over Seagate Ironwolf for your NAS disks. I've used both. The latter has a higher spindle speed, which equates to higher transfer rates, but as a consequence is noisier, runs hotter and therefore consumes more power.

 

[Stux]

FWIW, I use FreeNAS’ vm capability for running docker machines. Wouldn’t use it for windows.

 

[sretalla]

FWIW, I use FreeNAS’ vm capability for running docker machines. Wouldn’t use it for windows.

I am successfully running a Windows 10 VM on my test system, but it does seem to push resources. Maybe I need to make a bit more effort to adjust the tuning parameters for ARC in order to ensure memory allocation works out (autotune certainly didn't help here, having assigned basically all the memory to ARC), so my netdata alerts keep arriving to warn me about all memory being consumed and paging starting.

I agree that it's probably better staying in the 'nix world and using docker or linux VMs... or better still jails to get your jobs done.