It's been a while since I've used --well... I've never used TrueNAS. I went back through my user/posting history and it shows a couple posts back in 2012, then a few in 2015. I used FreeNAS a bunch back in 2010-2015 time range, then I sold out and moved over to SMB desktop NAS devices. The current hardware I have is starting to fail, I'm nearly out of space and I need more performance so I thought I'd build a TrueNAS CORE machine for a year or three... Learn, make a bunch of mistakes, etc... Then in a few years, TrueNAS SCALE will be a little more mature, and I'll know enough to install/build a decent TrueNAS SCALE storage machine. So that's the plan... Something small-ish, mostly for ESXi VM's (NFS) for a year or so, then eventually move over to a new build on TrueNAS SCALE.
I have a bunch of 2TB 3.5" drives. A lot --probably thirty (30) in total across all machines. They are OLD. They are the Seagate vintage with the lawsuit over all those drive failures. Date codes are 2010-2012. I saw someone post about making a triple-mirror setup for SSD. As I understood it, it was basically a HW R-10 (striping mirrored pairs) except striping mirrored three-pair-triplicate-drives-??? I expect a decent failure rate but what else am I going to do with the drives? Drill holes in them and bin them? What I understood of it was the following:
vdev0:
drive0 <-mirror-> drive1 <-mirror-> drive2
vdev1:
drive3 <-mirror-> drive4 <-mirror-> drive5
vdev2:
drive6 <-mirror-> drive7 <-mirror-> drive8
And then stripe the above vdevs.
Question #1 would be: Is striping three drives like that "a thing"?
#2: Sanity check... In a normal 2-drive mirror then stripe setup (like raid10), I can add and subtract vdevs from the pool correct? If I have three mirrored pairs striped, I can add a 4th mirrored vdev pair to the stripe pool correct? Can I remove vdevs from a pool? How about changing size? If I have 3x two-drive mirrors with 2tb drives, when all of the 2tb drives are gone/dead, can I buy two 4tb drives, mirror them in a vdev, and add that 4tb mirror into the pool with the 2tb vdevs?
#3: vdevs have to be like-like correct? So if do a three-drive mirror as shown above, if I wanted to buy two new 2tb drives, or two new 4tb drives... That won't work because a vdev of two drives mirrored =! a vdev of three drives mirrored. Is that logic correct? vdevs in a pool must match? And **I think** mirrored vdevs can change size across a striped pool, but **I think** that other vdevs like rz-n need to be same:same, identical in size, type, arrangement, etc. when added to a pool? So if I wanted to add a vdev of 4tb drives to a pool with all 3tb drives... No big deal... Just partition/format down the 4tb drives to match the size of the 3tb vdevs, and present the 4tb vdev to the system as if it were 3tb? (hope that made sense)
#4: Back when I used FreeNAS last, stuff like Optane and NVMe didn't exist (or was not at all mainstream). I was paying a lot of money for 64gb & 120gb nand ssd. I have a 10gbe network. The data and traffic is going to be vmware and nfs. I have a xeon e-2246g on a supermicro board (c242 chipset) I can re-purpose for a TrueNAS Core build. The board has one pcie x4 m.2 slot. Will I be fine running that e-2246g cpu with 128gb ecc, some fast-ish 1tb nvme drive with plp, and then an hba with a pool of striped mirrored pairs (or triplicate mirrors)? I feel like my brain is mush after reading so much about slog/zil, l2arc, etc. I only have 10gbe network. Do I need anything more than max RAM, a decent-ish (with plp) nvme for slog, and a solid hba card?
#5: I haven't really found much about BSD support for Intel Quick Assist or BSD-friendly HW encryption & accelerators. Am I looking in the wrong place?
Thanks.
#6: Last question --SCALE... Who is it focused at? What wife-acceptance-factor will it have? Is it aimed at SMB or is it more of a home/retail integrated product? I'll probably try it and install it on something to check it out so mostly wondering about the focus of the project. She recently upgraded her laptop and phone (apple) which caused issues with some of our older NAS devices (security, old smb/nfs protocols, etc.). I'm wondering if TrueNAS Scale is going to be focused at the retail NAS markets with easy gui's, packages, etc. that's family-friendly, or will it be a little more SMB/enterprise (not as WAF friendly)? Thanks.
I have a bunch of 2TB 3.5" drives. A lot --probably thirty (30) in total across all machines. They are OLD. They are the Seagate vintage with the lawsuit over all those drive failures. Date codes are 2010-2012. I saw someone post about making a triple-mirror setup for SSD. As I understood it, it was basically a HW R-10 (striping mirrored pairs) except striping mirrored three-pair-triplicate-drives-??? I expect a decent failure rate but what else am I going to do with the drives? Drill holes in them and bin them? What I understood of it was the following:
vdev0:
drive0 <-mirror-> drive1 <-mirror-> drive2
vdev1:
drive3 <-mirror-> drive4 <-mirror-> drive5
vdev2:
drive6 <-mirror-> drive7 <-mirror-> drive8
And then stripe the above vdevs.
Question #1 would be: Is striping three drives like that "a thing"?
#2: Sanity check... In a normal 2-drive mirror then stripe setup (like raid10), I can add and subtract vdevs from the pool correct? If I have three mirrored pairs striped, I can add a 4th mirrored vdev pair to the stripe pool correct? Can I remove vdevs from a pool? How about changing size? If I have 3x two-drive mirrors with 2tb drives, when all of the 2tb drives are gone/dead, can I buy two 4tb drives, mirror them in a vdev, and add that 4tb mirror into the pool with the 2tb vdevs?
#3: vdevs have to be like-like correct? So if do a three-drive mirror as shown above, if I wanted to buy two new 2tb drives, or two new 4tb drives... That won't work because a vdev of two drives mirrored =! a vdev of three drives mirrored. Is that logic correct? vdevs in a pool must match? And **I think** mirrored vdevs can change size across a striped pool, but **I think** that other vdevs like rz-n need to be same:same, identical in size, type, arrangement, etc. when added to a pool? So if I wanted to add a vdev of 4tb drives to a pool with all 3tb drives... No big deal... Just partition/format down the 4tb drives to match the size of the 3tb vdevs, and present the 4tb vdev to the system as if it were 3tb? (hope that made sense)
#4: Back when I used FreeNAS last, stuff like Optane and NVMe didn't exist (or was not at all mainstream). I was paying a lot of money for 64gb & 120gb nand ssd. I have a 10gbe network. The data and traffic is going to be vmware and nfs. I have a xeon e-2246g on a supermicro board (c242 chipset) I can re-purpose for a TrueNAS Core build. The board has one pcie x4 m.2 slot. Will I be fine running that e-2246g cpu with 128gb ecc, some fast-ish 1tb nvme drive with plp, and then an hba with a pool of striped mirrored pairs (or triplicate mirrors)? I feel like my brain is mush after reading so much about slog/zil, l2arc, etc. I only have 10gbe network. Do I need anything more than max RAM, a decent-ish (with plp) nvme for slog, and a solid hba card?
#5: I haven't really found much about BSD support for Intel Quick Assist or BSD-friendly HW encryption & accelerators. Am I looking in the wrong place?
Thanks.
#6: Last question --SCALE... Who is it focused at? What wife-acceptance-factor will it have? Is it aimed at SMB or is it more of a home/retail integrated product? I'll probably try it and install it on something to check it out so mostly wondering about the focus of the project. She recently upgraded her laptop and phone (apple) which caused issues with some of our older NAS devices (security, old smb/nfs protocols, etc.). I'm wondering if TrueNAS Scale is going to be focused at the retail NAS markets with easy gui's, packages, etc. that's family-friendly, or will it be a little more SMB/enterprise (not as WAF friendly)? Thanks.