Hi guys,
At work we are going with EMC Storages. One of them is dedicated for videos and photos. There are aprox. 40 TB data on it. We were searching for a backup solution for the datas.
The situation was that it should be as cheap as possible.
We decided to go with a case from XCASE (http://www.xcase.co.uk) . They have quite cheap cases, a really good service and fast shipping.
The case we use was the following:
X-Case RM 424 - 24 Hotswap Bay 6GB Mini SAS (SATA/SAS Backplane) - Rail Kit included with 900 Watt Psu for 600 Euro. (http://www.xcase.co.uk/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CASE-XCASE-RM424)
It can take 24 drives and has 6GBs Backpanels already built in. You get everything shipped with it what you need.
As motherboard we got an Intel® Server Board S5520HC for 375 Euro.
We use two Intel Xenon 5600 and 64 GB RAM.
For the SAS Connection to the back panels we use an Adaptec Raid 52445. It has 6 internal and one external SFF connectors.
Every disk is used as single volume. With this configuration Freenas 8.0.4 64 bit can see the disks.
After flashing the newest firmware on the raid controller every things seems to work fine.
It´s now running with 8x 3 TB discs because we are waiting for the SAS Cables to be delivered.
The plan was to use one big Raidz2 with 2 spare disks. After making some research and testing I realized that the spare discs don´t pop in automated.
That´s really disappointing.
So we decided to set up a normal RAIDZ2 without spares.
Also the replacing for disks don´t work for me. I tried it on the GUI but even on the shell it didn´t worked. I think I have to play around a little more with the shell commands.
Also I didn´t managed to get SMART running until now.
The worse thing about it is that we won´t realize when a disk is gone and even if we would´t be able to change it in this state
Means we have to work on a solution, but as the storage is "only" for backup our EMC it isn´t a deal breaker.
One note here: I really can´t understand why all this and more (like hotplugin) is working on the ix system but not in the FreeNAS. I can understand that the want to sell the IX Storages and it´s not necessary to put all buissnes functionality in the free system but in my opinion it is a bad reputation when the free variant has not an easy way to change disks or even a bullet proofed notification about disk health.
I think that many companies that are middle-sized (means 50 employes) will get the free system a shot and when everything runs smoothly go with the IX systems. We were really thinking about replacing our EMC (and we have three of them) because the cost a lot of money but in my situation I can´t say let´s go and buy an IX System because there´s no good feeling after having this kind of troubles with the free system and IXsystems machines are too expensive to say okay let´s try it and see what will happen.
And yes i know then there is support and they are tested and so on, but in my opinion it could be a great way to advertise the commercial product when the basics for a NAS work great in the free system.
Maybe somebody has an idea how I can get following things to work:
replacing disks
get spares popped in
SMART
maybe hot plugging (only a niche to have)
I know you need LOG files to help. Maybe you can tell me what LOGS would be interesting?!
Has somebody checked a Freenas with Nagios without SNMP Traps? Has somebody some input for me concerning NAGIOS checks?
Will post some performance datas after having all disks online. Could take up to two weeks :-(
Critical words and opinions are very welcome.
At work we are going with EMC Storages. One of them is dedicated for videos and photos. There are aprox. 40 TB data on it. We were searching for a backup solution for the datas.
The situation was that it should be as cheap as possible.
We decided to go with a case from XCASE (http://www.xcase.co.uk) . They have quite cheap cases, a really good service and fast shipping.
The case we use was the following:
X-Case RM 424 - 24 Hotswap Bay 6GB Mini SAS (SATA/SAS Backplane) - Rail Kit included with 900 Watt Psu for 600 Euro. (http://www.xcase.co.uk/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CASE-XCASE-RM424)
It can take 24 drives and has 6GBs Backpanels already built in. You get everything shipped with it what you need.
As motherboard we got an Intel® Server Board S5520HC for 375 Euro.
We use two Intel Xenon 5600 and 64 GB RAM.
For the SAS Connection to the back panels we use an Adaptec Raid 52445. It has 6 internal and one external SFF connectors.
Every disk is used as single volume. With this configuration Freenas 8.0.4 64 bit can see the disks.
After flashing the newest firmware on the raid controller every things seems to work fine.
It´s now running with 8x 3 TB discs because we are waiting for the SAS Cables to be delivered.
The plan was to use one big Raidz2 with 2 spare disks. After making some research and testing I realized that the spare discs don´t pop in automated.
That´s really disappointing.
So we decided to set up a normal RAIDZ2 without spares.
Also the replacing for disks don´t work for me. I tried it on the GUI but even on the shell it didn´t worked. I think I have to play around a little more with the shell commands.
Also I didn´t managed to get SMART running until now.
The worse thing about it is that we won´t realize when a disk is gone and even if we would´t be able to change it in this state
Means we have to work on a solution, but as the storage is "only" for backup our EMC it isn´t a deal breaker.
One note here: I really can´t understand why all this and more (like hotplugin) is working on the ix system but not in the FreeNAS. I can understand that the want to sell the IX Storages and it´s not necessary to put all buissnes functionality in the free system but in my opinion it is a bad reputation when the free variant has not an easy way to change disks or even a bullet proofed notification about disk health.
I think that many companies that are middle-sized (means 50 employes) will get the free system a shot and when everything runs smoothly go with the IX systems. We were really thinking about replacing our EMC (and we have three of them) because the cost a lot of money but in my situation I can´t say let´s go and buy an IX System because there´s no good feeling after having this kind of troubles with the free system and IXsystems machines are too expensive to say okay let´s try it and see what will happen.
And yes i know then there is support and they are tested and so on, but in my opinion it could be a great way to advertise the commercial product when the basics for a NAS work great in the free system.
Maybe somebody has an idea how I can get following things to work:
replacing disks
get spares popped in
SMART
maybe hot plugging (only a niche to have)
I know you need LOG files to help. Maybe you can tell me what LOGS would be interesting?!
Has somebody checked a Freenas with Nagios without SNMP Traps? Has somebody some input for me concerning NAGIOS checks?
Will post some performance datas after having all disks online. Could take up to two weeks :-(
Critical words and opinions are very welcome.
