Some time ago I decided to let go of my Windows 2012 Essentials home server. It is a bit much for my use and I am fat up with keeping up with all the updates. I soon found out that a consumer NAS was not for me (for several reasons). So I started to look into alternatives (even tried Amahi). To make a long story short I go for FreeNAS. I have played around with it a bit on some old hardware and liked it (a lot).
Now it's time to dismantle my Windows box and dedicate it to FreeNAS. My hardware is OK and meets about all the demands for FreeNAS and ZFS. What's left is to decide about the configuration of my storage pool. And that is were things get a bit difficult for me. On the Windows box, I pooled my drives with Stablebit Drivepool and that worked OK for me. But working with ZFS will force me to rethink the way I am going to handle my drives.
I own 6 2TB WD red drives. The oldest one is about 2 years and they are all OK. There is no room (for now) on the budget to buy any more disks. I have done a lot of searching and found a lot of information. Problem is that I also found a lot of contradicting information. It's a hard job to weed it all out.
I found an article stating that I should never use Raidz (2/3) but would be better of with a pool of mirrored vdevs, Other articles and forum threads are raving about Raidz Raidz2, Raidz3 etc.
At this moment I think I need to choose between Mirrored vdevs or a Z2/Z3 configuration. Sources I have found are stating that you should start a Raidz2 with 6 disks or more and a Raidz3 with 9 disks or more (so Raidz3 is out for me?).
Here is my use case.
The FreeNAS box will be a file server and will be used to store backups of a couple of workstations/laptops.
The file server will hold my administration (business and private)
The file server will hold some media like ebooks, Music (Flac), photos and a limited number of movies.
At this moment my storage contains about 2 TB of data and I expect a growth of about 1 TB a year.
Of course I have a decent back up plan in mind (on site and cloud storage). I love my data.
What I would appreciate is to receive some thoughts/advice about the best configuration for my storage, keeping my number of disks and my use case in mind . Especially reactions of those of you who are working with a pool of 6 disks and your reasoning for choosing a certain configuration would help me out. Thanks in advance.
Now it's time to dismantle my Windows box and dedicate it to FreeNAS. My hardware is OK and meets about all the demands for FreeNAS and ZFS. What's left is to decide about the configuration of my storage pool. And that is were things get a bit difficult for me. On the Windows box, I pooled my drives with Stablebit Drivepool and that worked OK for me. But working with ZFS will force me to rethink the way I am going to handle my drives.
I own 6 2TB WD red drives. The oldest one is about 2 years and they are all OK. There is no room (for now) on the budget to buy any more disks. I have done a lot of searching and found a lot of information. Problem is that I also found a lot of contradicting information. It's a hard job to weed it all out.
I found an article stating that I should never use Raidz (2/3) but would be better of with a pool of mirrored vdevs, Other articles and forum threads are raving about Raidz Raidz2, Raidz3 etc.
At this moment I think I need to choose between Mirrored vdevs or a Z2/Z3 configuration. Sources I have found are stating that you should start a Raidz2 with 6 disks or more and a Raidz3 with 9 disks or more (so Raidz3 is out for me?).
Here is my use case.
The FreeNAS box will be a file server and will be used to store backups of a couple of workstations/laptops.
The file server will hold my administration (business and private)
The file server will hold some media like ebooks, Music (Flac), photos and a limited number of movies.
At this moment my storage contains about 2 TB of data and I expect a growth of about 1 TB a year.
Of course I have a decent back up plan in mind (on site and cloud storage). I love my data.
What I would appreciate is to receive some thoughts/advice about the best configuration for my storage, keeping my number of disks and my use case in mind . Especially reactions of those of you who are working with a pool of 6 disks and your reasoning for choosing a certain configuration would help me out. Thanks in advance.
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