Yet another new user thread

[goates]

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of changing my home server over to FreeNAS from Windows Home Server and have a couple of questions. At the moment I have FreeNAS 9.2 up and running on the server and am slowly working through the settings to learn how it all works. I've gone through the PowerPoint that cyberjock put together once, and will probably need to read through it again to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The system specs:

Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2
Asus P8C WS motherboard (2 Intel NICs are built-in)
32GB Kingston DDR3-1066 ECC RAM
LSI 9207-8i HBA
8 x Seagate 3TB Terascale drives (formerly Constellation CS; 4 connected to the motherboard, and the others to the LSI HBA)
4 x Seagate 2TB Terascale drives (formerly Constellation CS; all connected to the LSI HBA)
1 x 120GB SSD (motherboard SATA)
1 x 256GB SSD (motherboard SATA)

This server will primarily be used as a general file server and for backing up my other computers, a mix of Macs and PCs. I'm also interested in trying out the BTSync and ownCloud plugins, learning more about FreeBSD, and maybe using the server as a datastore for a couple of VMs (for development and testing use).

1) When setting up a ZFS volume through the WebGUI using the 8 3TB drives, it seems to want to set them up in 2 RAIDZ2 groups of 4 drives. The result is just under 11TB of storage overall. I was planning on setting them up as one RAIDZ2 volume, giving a little over 16TB of space. However the WebGUI brings up a warning that this is non-optimal. As I'm still quite new to ZFS, can someone explain what the non-optimal warning means exactly? I would very much like to get this setup correctly the first time. As all of my critical data and photos are backed up offsite using CrashPlan, I'm willing to take on a little more risk to get the extra space, but maybe I shouldn't be?

2) For trying out a VM datastore, I was thinking of using the 4 2TB drives in a striped setup. Are there any pitfalls to watch for?

3) Given the amount of RAM in the system and what I read in the PowerPoint slideshow, I'm not planning on using the SSDs for either the ZIL or L2ARC. Is this a safe assumption, or I am missing anything? Would one or both SSDs work fine for plugins or jails?

Thank you ahead of time to anyone who takes the time to read all of this. And even more thanks for any responses!

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

I will chime in with my 2 cents here.

1. Why waste 4 drives on redundancy. With 8*3TB a raidz2 or raidz3 should do nicely. That would give you 18TB or 15TB of storage. The WebGui is telling you that performance might not be optimal, but it will work just fine. And since you are not running a service for 200 people you will probably be just fine.

2. If you make a stripe then a single dead disk can kill all your data, not really optimal. You could do mirrored stripe (raid 0+1) or you could do raidz2. I think you will find that the performance is more than enough for a home setup.

3. I would pick the small 120gb for jails, unless you seriously need jail space. :)

And remember to set the LSI to IT-Mode.

A final comment on your motherboard: It's a workstation board with sound and all kinds of other stuff built in, so you may wish to buy a server board so you don't spend electricity on running a sound card you are not using. As always the supermicro X10 boards are popular and there is even a board with an onboard LSI.

 

[goates]

Thanks for the answers.

1) Using 8 drives under RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 is what I would prefer. Just wasn't sure what the non-optimal message was about and didn't want to get into trouble later.

2) RAIDZ2 sounds like it is a better way to go.

3) 120GB is definitely plenty for my use. The other SSD can be better used elsewhere I think!

This LSI card came in IT mode I believe, but I will double check. I certainly didn't setup any RAID at the hardware level, and don't plan to.

At the moment I'm going to stick with this motherboard as I do already have it, and the onboard audio and Firewire have been disabled in the UEFI. The video card that was used during the setup will also be coming out of the system too. When it's time to upgrade, I will look for a proper server board though.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

I think it'll work just fine. Good luck