Using hotswap disks and on-demand storage

[DeepCb]

I am thinking about building a FreeNAS box for personal usage, at home. This is intended to be a replacement for a few hotswap disks currently in my PC. The hotswap bays each have a power switch and most of the time the disks are off. I would only power them up on demand. The OS automatically discovers and mounts the disk. How does this translate to FreeNAS?

Intended storage setup:

• One pool with two mirrored disks. Always online, for frequently used data.
  
• N other disks, one pool per disk. No mirror, no stripe set. Most of the time offline, used on demand only.

To increase flexibility I would buy a box with hotswap bays. Unfortunately most cases do not have a power button per bay (case recommendations, anyone?).

1. Is this supported at all?
2. What would be involved in bringing a disk (pool) online or offline? Can this be automated or do I have to manually add / remove pools and manually power up / power down those disks?
3. Assuming hotswap bays with individual power buttons: can I turn on the disk and FreeNAS would mount it and bring the pool online? And to turn it off I would remove the pool via FreeNAS UI, then turn off the disk?

One more thing: I'd like to use encryption for all disks and will enter the passphrease each time a disk comes online.

 

[kdragon75]

Not at all practical. FreeNAS is designed to be always on always available storage.

WARNING DO NOT USE ENCRYPTION UNLESS YOU FULL UNDERSTAND HOW THE ENTIRE PROCESS WORKS, INCLUDING REPLACEMENT OF BAD DISKS.

MANY people have lost years worth Irreplaceable data because they didn't understand how to manage it correctly.

 

[danb35]

If rather than individual power switches, you simply remove and re-insert the disks, this could potentially work, though I concur it really isn't a good idea. FreeNAS won't automatically import the pools, though; you'd need to tell it to import the pools using the web GUI. But what would you be doing with those other pools?

 

[DeepCb]

Well, you guys are not exactly optimistic. That is unfortunate, I was really looking forward to use ZFS features like snapshots and send/recv. Thanks for the advice though. Good thing is I did not start the build yet so there's still time to check out other options.