Which RAID to choose for my project?

Th3ddy

Cadet
Joined
Aug 3, 2020
Messages
6
Hi, everyone,



I hope to find answers to my questions. Especially about the Raid part.

I have different HDDs for different uses and so ... The question is which Raid will be the most suitable... !?



Before making the listing, here is my hardware config:



Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 550 @ 3.20GHz
16GB of RAM
PCIe card 10 SATA 3 6GBps on 2x port


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I have 2 HDDs of 10Tb each that I plan to put in RAID0 (STRIPPE).

Only storage for my movies.
No need for data protection.
Use for the PLEX server.
Do you see any suggestions? Any advice? ...



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I have 8 HDDs of 6Tb each that I intend to use for my personal data and therefore with protection of them.

I will have a daily data backup to a SYNOLOGY DS918+ NAS with 16Tb in RAID SHR with a fault tolerance on 1 disk.



Questions and Answers :



Which RAID to use on FreeNAS ?
Standard Raid or Combined Raid ?
Fault tolerance on 1 or 2 disks ?
Do you see any suggestions ? Any advice ? .



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I have 1 2Tb disk dedicated to plugins !



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I have 1 SSD of 240 GB dedicated to the system!



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This is a home NAS that will serve as my priority storage and it will be the cloud for my family members on the outside for their personal data.



In advance, thanks for your feedback ;) !



Th3ddy
 

styno

Patron
Joined
Apr 11, 2016
Messages
466
grmbl.. Typed a whole nice post with quotes and links and the forum ate it. :confused:
Here is the short version:
  • Hardware: what motherboard are you using? Be very careful with that sata card. It may work but chances are you are better of with a different card (see the hardware recommendations).
  • Media storage: think about this: while certain media can be reproduced, a single disk failure will result in losing a whole lot of storage at once. Reacquiring may be possible but will most likely take a lot of time. Only you can value your time.
  • Personal data: with these drives and that use case it would make sense to use RaidZ2 + a backup (that you have in place).
  • Extras: you probably won't need the plugin or SSD drive as those will most likely be counter-productive in your system and even slow it down. edit: If you are going to use the SSD as a boot device that of course makes total sense, you can even think about using a couple of smaller drives and mirror them.
Overall advice: have a look at the documentation, focus on the storage & ZFS primer side. Before you buy parts you can always ask in the forum on opinions or other options, lots of knowledgeable ppl here that are eager to help you out.

Have fun building the system!
 
Last edited:

Th3ddy

Cadet
Joined
Aug 3, 2020
Messages
6
many thanks for your feedback. I will follow your advice rigorously. I will be sure to give you a feedback on my installation.

what do you think of 2 vdev of 4x6TB in Raidz1 or 2 ?!
 

Yorick

Wizard
Joined
Nov 4, 2018
Messages
1,912
For your use case - private cloud storage, media storage, home use - I'd use a single raidz2 8-wide. That is, in fact, what I am using. It's fast enough to saturate a gig link. Where multiple vdevs come in is with IOPS-heavy workloads, and from what I am reading here, you don't have those. You can get away with single redundancy since you have a backup, but I'd still go with dual redundancy. It'll take you a couple days for a full restore over a gig link.

6TB drives: What's the make and model of those? Just want to make sure you didn't buy SMR drives.
 
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