Wanna set up a FreeNAS box with some spare kit - will it work?

[Storms]

Here's my hardware:

Motherboard: Asus M4A87TD
RAM: 2x2GB DDR3 (Total 4 GB)
Harddrives: 3 x 2TB drives
1. WD Caviar Green
2. Seagate Barracuda
3. Seagate Barracuda

Will this setup work? Initially for testing purposes I was gonna leave it as it is but later was gonna add an extra 4GB RAM so the total would become 8GB

I read somewhere in the documentation about having the right 'disk controller'... what's a disk controller??? Do I need one?? I assumed I'd just connect the discs to the sata ports on the motherboard.

Storms

 

[Storms]

Well I'll answer my own question... I've set it up and it does work ;)

PS the setup was nice and easy.

Now the next thing I wanna do is test redundancy; i.e. pull the plug on a drive and then ensure no data is lost

Assume I have 4 discs under a RAIDZ-2 setup, what's the best way of testing drive failure without risking damage to the drive?

Shall I just switch it off, remove a drive and power on again?? then introduce a new drive to ensure things are stable again?

 

[cyberjock]

I know that just pulling a drive while the system is running is NOT the recommended way(although that's what I did when my zpool had no data except copies) to see if my zpool redundancy worked and to see first hand how to recover from a failed drive. I believe that if you follow the FreeNAS manual section 6.3.10 it will guide you on removing a drive.

In bold it says not to just pull a drive without telling the OS first. :P

 

[Storms]

My only concern with following the manual is that 'real life' drive failures will not follow the rule book. If a drive suddenly goes offline will the data be retained??

That's what I want to test with dummy data before I decide to use it for real.

What was your test result?? did you manage to recover the data?

 

[cyberjock]

I had zero problems. The concern is with data that might be in the swap space that hasn't been committed to the zpool and will be lost when you pull a drive. From my own testing on my machine I had determined that my machine never uses the swap space. I can only assume that is because the zpool can read/write much faster than my Gb NIC can receive/send data.

After removal of the drive I simply reinserted it about 15 minutes later and using the FreeNAS manual was able to recover with no ill effects.

I've had the same concern as you regarding the swap. You can't exactly tell FreeNAS that a drive is about to fail. Not sure how to answer the concern. Perhaps someone with alot more information could tell us what we are missing(or not missing).