Does this build make sense?

[espresso]

Ok so I am more concerned about my current hard drive arrangement.

I have a 4U server chassis where it is possible to connect 8x hard drives in total. Currently I have this as my setup.

4x Western Digital Red 2TB hard drives and 1x Western Digital Black 500GB hard drive.

I plan to use the WD Black for the actual operating system and the WD Red for storage. I am not familiar with ZFS at all and through researching have seen some conflicting information as to whether this setup makes any sense or has too few hard drives, can someone please advise if this makes sense or not?

 

[melloa]

Hello @espresso.

To get you moving on the right direction why don't you provide your server hardware? Motherboard, memory, HBA (if any), Back Plane (if any), CPU, etc.

There are several ways to setup a server. For instance I have my vmware on a supermicro chassis with six hotswap bays. To won't use my hotswaps for the boot disk, I've used one of the MB sata ports and put a SSD inside the chassis.

Just saying that as you only have 8 bays, so you might want to use all of them now or in the future for your data storage (ZFS pool).

For that, I'd consider raidz2 or above, so five or more HDs would be what I'd use. Keep in mind that you can't add disks to a pool, so plan carefully. Do a search for @Bidule0hm ZFS calculator to plan you space and HDs size.

Good luck!

 

[espresso]

I have not yet decided on the other hardware just yet, I was figuring just to start with the hard drives to make sure I get the number i need for proper use of ZFS.

 

[danb35]

I plan to use the WD Black for the actual operating system

Although this will work, it's extremely wasteful. FreeNAS is designed to be installed on a small (16 GB or so) flash device, and the boot device can't be used for any other purpose.

As to your other disks, ZFS will happily work with any number of disks, and give redundancy (if configured properly) with two or more. There are plenty of folks using FreeNAS with just a few disks.

 

[BigDave]

Ok so I am more concerned about my current hard drive arrangement.

I have a 4U server chassis where it is possible to connect 8x hard drives in total. Currently I have this as my setup.

4x Western Digital Red 2TB hard drives and 1x Western Digital Black 500GB hard drive.

I plan to use the WD Black for the actual operating system and the WD Red for storage. I am not familiar with ZFS at all and through researching have seen some conflicting information as to whether this setup makes any sense or has too few hard drives, can someone please advise if this makes sense or not?

First things first, welcome to the forums.
When it comes to getting started with FreeNAS, I personally have gotten all my advise and guidance from this website and would encourage you to do likewise.
We have an excellent Resources section with four different sub sections (Hardware, FreeNAS 9.10, Fundamentals and Advanced) which should be VERY helpful.

Based on your first post, my recommendation would be to start with comparing the hardware you have on hand against the recommendations you find here.
I can say with much confidence, the greater percentage of issues with new users and FreeNAS/ZFS is hardware related. You must make a time commitment
to study up a bit, but I will guarantee you your experience will be much more rewarding if you do so.

 

[melloa]

I have not yet decided on the other hardware just yet, I was figuring just to start with the hard drives to make sure I get the number i need for proper use of ZFS.

Build a plan. Start with what you need in storage, applications, # of users, etc. Check what the folks here recommend regarding hardware on the Resources tab https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/.

As the cost to build your dream NAS could be a little high, think on how to built it in a way you can upgrade. For instance, if your Motherboard has four memory slots and you are looking for 64GB RAM, you can start with 2x16GB and add two more later.

The same isn't true (or easier) for disks, so plan your pool considering the redundancy level you are comfortable with, projects space utilization, add future use, and consider you should only use 80% of the available space.

As Mr. @BigDave said:

You must make a time commitment
to study up a bit, but I will guarantee you your experience will be much more rewarding if you do so.