Configuration & Usage questions, RAID1

[three_jeeps]

I am in the process of setting up a HP proliant server (N54L) with dual 2tb drives in a RAID1 configuration. I am considering running FreeNAS, and it will run on a separate disk, either USB stick or another HD - so both the 2TB drives will be strictly data repositories.
I want to split the 2 TB (D0, D1) drive into 5 equally sized partitions.
Functionally:
P0 - xp_machine1 backup,
P1 - xp_machine2 backup,
P2-OSX_machine1 backup
P3 - OSX_machine2 backup
I want partitions 0-3 to be mirrored.
At the moment, D0-P4 will be a video repository, and D1-P4 will be a music repository for streaming to appropriate video/audio devices.

Is this something FreeNAS can accomplish/manage? Can it handle cases where the source partition is smaller than the mirror partition? (e.g. can it do mdadm like things?)

I also want to run a media server such as PLEX. How can that be accomplished? Can I use a package manger and get/install it?

I am contemplating the FreeNAS approach versus Ubuntu server/mdadm and roll in my servers of choice (media, web, game, etc).

I am concerned about the ZFS file system for a couple of reasons: used it on a netgear ‘toaster’ and it was extremely frail and the tools to work with it were buggy as hell, also, have heard stories that due to bugs in NAS ZFS file system design, errors occur that make the whole volume useless. I am storing valuable data on both the primary and the mirror and I can afford loosing anything.

So lets say my FreeNAS box blows up and the only thing that survives is my mirror disk. I want to get all my data off of it. I want to pop it into a Ubuntu/debian (or even Windoz or Mac) machine and copy the data to a usb drive for the purpose of putting that usb drive in either a xp machine or osx machine and grab the files. Can it be done? Or do I need to build/install FreeNAS in order to get the data off the disk?
Many thanks for your input/suggestions.
-J

 

[cyberjock]

You should do 1 pool and just separate them into folders. FreeNAS uses a disk for ZFS in its entirety as one partition. Splitting it into partitions isn't support unless you plan to do everything via CLI.

Didn't search the forums did you? Search around Plex forums and these forums. You'll see its not working for FreeBSD aside from a very early beta. No ETA on when or if it will ever work on FreeNAS. One thread was updated just a day or two ago.

ZFS is the file system enterprise class hardware uses. Netgear's implementation of ZFS is likely their own fault. I'm not sure what "tools" are supposed to work with it. User error is also a possiblity. If you don't know what you are doing with ZFS you can make some horrible mistakes.

You can or can't afford to lose anything? If you can't you'd better make sure you do your homework before you use FreeNAS and keep a backup of your data on another disk that is not on the FreeNAS server. This is true for all data that you can't afford to lose.

You can import the zpool on any system that has ZFS support for the version your zpool is or newer. I'll let you decide what OS you want to research and how much support each project has. You can choose to make another FreeNAS USB stick and import your config file(or just your zpool) and get access to your data again.