Hey,
Up until now I was sure that solutions like - Drobo - are a great product and with the ease of use I didn't see why people worked so hard to build there own NAS devices in the first place.
But then came the time when after 4 years the device stopped working altogether, which means there wasn't an easy way to recover the data (at least I did a backup of the most impotent data for me), but for hardware failure in that situation you almost always MUST to get a new expensive device again.
At this point I started researching other solutions and after many google searches, youtube videos and reading around this forum, I've decided that is the way to go.
After understanding that this is the direction I want to take, I began thinking of the hardware, I understood fast enough that old hardware is not going to cut it and I in case I want to keep my data I should spend some money.
Here comes the first set of questions, I have my hardware picked, and I wanted to ask if for what I am planning this is going to cut it or should I go another way.
Case : Lian-Li PC-Q26 ( I don't have a lot of space and this one shows a lot of promise as I can mount 10 HDD inside)
MB + CPU: Asrock C2750D4I (Intel Avoton C2750 Octa-Core Processor) -> I went with this MB because
1. it has enough sata ports (I don't need to spend additional money on a raid/sata controller)
2. it fits in the case - Mini-ITX.
3. intel NIC, which from what I was managed to understand is the better option for FreeNAS.
Memory: 2 x Kingston, PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 ECC 16GB (I was thinking of starting with 16GB in total, but after reading the presentation "Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC for noobs!" from the "New to FreeNAS?" section, I've decided that I better start from more ram and it should be ECC.
HDD: this part is where I most worried, I have the drive from my old NAS solution, and few new drives.
new: 2 x 4TB Red WD , 1 x 4TB Green WD
old: 3 x 3TB Seagate, 2 x 2TB Samsung
I didn't want to waste any additional money on extra new HDDs and I didn't want to waste 5 old drives.
But I will run tests on the drives (new+old) to make sure they are even working properly, but in the best case scenario, if they all pass the tests without any errors, I wasn't able to figure out how should I setup my pool to contain multiple size hdds.
after I've covered the hardware I want to use, I would like to go over the goal of this NAS/Server.
Clients: 2 Raspberry Pi (Kodi / Plex Client), 1 Desktop, 4 Laptops, 2 Tablets 4 Phones ( I don't see a scenario where all of this clients work together , but 4-5 of this clients can and will stream / use data from the NAS.
Services: Plex Server, Sabnzbd, couchpotato, sickbeard, headphones (the hard part for this services, is the extraction of big movie files, if I download a 20GB bluray movie, it takes it toll on the CPU to extract the data) in the past I've had some issues with that, while the system was extraction a large archive file it had some difficulties streaming a video single (stutters), I want to understand if the CPU + Memory of this setup will be able to handle this load -> to stream the data, copy to and from the server and extract a file in the same time, I understand that there isn't magic answer to this and it will depend on a lot of other aspects of my network and firmware / software updates but if someone familiar with this CPU, should it handle this work load without any issues? was the choice of the octa-core a good one or I could go with the quad-core without worrying to much ?
I would greatly appreciate any suggestion or advise regarding the HW I chose.
Reading around about the initial setup seems really straight forward, but I had some configuration questions that I wasn't able to find a good answer for them.
1. Multiple zpools, each time I read a how-to or watched a youtube video, they all covered 1 zpool.
and mentioned that multiple vdev, can be a bad solution because 1 vdev in a zpool will cause the whole zpool to die, and combining multiple size hdds in one vdev isn't the best practice, so in case I will decide to go with different size hdds, can I create multiple zpools with 1 vdev in each that will aggregate the different size hdds ? or should I just create several vdevs with different sizes hdds in the same zpool ?
2. first I was planning to use RAID-z1 but I noticed that in some of the posts and guides the z2 sounds like the preferred choice, I understand that 2 drive failure is much better and safer but what I've thought of doing, and please correct me if I can't do it at all, I would like to put most of my storage 3/4 4TB hdds in z1, that will contain most of my media (movies / tv) that can be restored in case of 2 drive failure, but I would prefer to be able to keep it safe with 1 drive redundancy , and in another zpool, create a smaller capacity z2 vdev that will contain a more sensitive information (which will be backed up somewhere in the cloud and on another off site storage). will this setup protect my sensitive information with a 2 drive failure even if my larger storage zpool will die? or did I misunderstood the freenas configuration completely ?
3. adding new drives.
this part is really something the isn't clear for me, all the solutions for this made me think that the simple answer to this questions is just - No, once I setup my hdds I'm stuck with them, let me explain what I mean.
-> I've got 12 Sata ports on the MB, let say I've got 1 zpool with 3 vdevs:
vdev 1 ( 4 x 4TB)
vdev 2 (3 x 3TB)
vdev 3 (3 x 2TB)
all of them are raid-z2 for the 4TB , raid-z1 the rest
in this situation all 10 sata ports are occupied, which means I have only 2 additional sata ports, what I would like to do now . exchange the 3x3TB to another 4 x 4TB and add them to vdev 1. to do so I would need to find a place to store 16 TB of that ? ( 2x3tb + 2x4tv ?) and somehow create a new vdev? in the same zpool? but on the other hand I read in some places that you can't in any situation remove a vdev from a zpool. so I would need to create a new zpool ? but what with the other vdev in the same zpool, now I need to store 20TB somewhere but I don't see any situation where I have somewhere that I can store so much information, and I am not sure how safe it is to move all that data in such manner.
this was my initial way of thinking, that I think I understand wont work anyway.
what I understood might be possible is to change 1 drive each time in the 3TB vdev, and I won't see space increase until all drives will be with the same capacity, but then combining them into one vdev with the already existing vdev of 4tb isn't possible?
recovery, this part is really important to me so I want to make sure I understood it as it is.
1. hardware failure PSU / MB / CPU / Memory -> if no bad sectors were writing to the pool (hence the ECC memory should keep that from happening ?) I will change the faulty HW and all should work?
2. Moving to a brand new system , backup the configuration (which as I understood should be done regularly or is it over kill and should make sure to do it when I modify something in the configuration) connect the HDD to the new system, plugin a new FreeNAS usb OS, restore the configuration, and if everything is ok, the cluster should be back online ?
3. vdev / zpool failure , should I just start from scratch or is there a possibility to recover ?
any advise / suggestion is greatly appreciated, I really want to create a good reliable NAS solution this is why I am trying to get clear answers to my questions so I would be able avoid any surprises in the future once I will get the green light from someone here :) about the hw, i am planning do a lot of tests before the final NAS setup, but I want to be prepare with as much of information as possible, the forum posts are huge help that already answered a lot of other questions that I had.
Thanks,
Up until now I was sure that solutions like - Drobo - are a great product and with the ease of use I didn't see why people worked so hard to build there own NAS devices in the first place.
But then came the time when after 4 years the device stopped working altogether, which means there wasn't an easy way to recover the data (at least I did a backup of the most impotent data for me), but for hardware failure in that situation you almost always MUST to get a new expensive device again.
At this point I started researching other solutions and after many google searches, youtube videos and reading around this forum, I've decided that is the way to go.
After understanding that this is the direction I want to take, I began thinking of the hardware, I understood fast enough that old hardware is not going to cut it and I in case I want to keep my data I should spend some money.
Here comes the first set of questions, I have my hardware picked, and I wanted to ask if for what I am planning this is going to cut it or should I go another way.
Case : Lian-Li PC-Q26 ( I don't have a lot of space and this one shows a lot of promise as I can mount 10 HDD inside)
MB + CPU: Asrock C2750D4I (Intel Avoton C2750 Octa-Core Processor) -> I went with this MB because
1. it has enough sata ports (I don't need to spend additional money on a raid/sata controller)
2. it fits in the case - Mini-ITX.
3. intel NIC, which from what I was managed to understand is the better option for FreeNAS.
Memory: 2 x Kingston, PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 ECC 16GB (I was thinking of starting with 16GB in total, but after reading the presentation "Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC for noobs!" from the "New to FreeNAS?" section, I've decided that I better start from more ram and it should be ECC.
HDD: this part is where I most worried, I have the drive from my old NAS solution, and few new drives.
new: 2 x 4TB Red WD , 1 x 4TB Green WD
old: 3 x 3TB Seagate, 2 x 2TB Samsung
I didn't want to waste any additional money on extra new HDDs and I didn't want to waste 5 old drives.
But I will run tests on the drives (new+old) to make sure they are even working properly, but in the best case scenario, if they all pass the tests without any errors, I wasn't able to figure out how should I setup my pool to contain multiple size hdds.
after I've covered the hardware I want to use, I would like to go over the goal of this NAS/Server.
Clients: 2 Raspberry Pi (Kodi / Plex Client), 1 Desktop, 4 Laptops, 2 Tablets 4 Phones ( I don't see a scenario where all of this clients work together , but 4-5 of this clients can and will stream / use data from the NAS.
Services: Plex Server, Sabnzbd, couchpotato, sickbeard, headphones (the hard part for this services, is the extraction of big movie files, if I download a 20GB bluray movie, it takes it toll on the CPU to extract the data) in the past I've had some issues with that, while the system was extraction a large archive file it had some difficulties streaming a video single (stutters), I want to understand if the CPU + Memory of this setup will be able to handle this load -> to stream the data, copy to and from the server and extract a file in the same time, I understand that there isn't magic answer to this and it will depend on a lot of other aspects of my network and firmware / software updates but if someone familiar with this CPU, should it handle this work load without any issues? was the choice of the octa-core a good one or I could go with the quad-core without worrying to much ?
I would greatly appreciate any suggestion or advise regarding the HW I chose.
Reading around about the initial setup seems really straight forward, but I had some configuration questions that I wasn't able to find a good answer for them.
1. Multiple zpools, each time I read a how-to or watched a youtube video, they all covered 1 zpool.
and mentioned that multiple vdev, can be a bad solution because 1 vdev in a zpool will cause the whole zpool to die, and combining multiple size hdds in one vdev isn't the best practice, so in case I will decide to go with different size hdds, can I create multiple zpools with 1 vdev in each that will aggregate the different size hdds ? or should I just create several vdevs with different sizes hdds in the same zpool ?
2. first I was planning to use RAID-z1 but I noticed that in some of the posts and guides the z2 sounds like the preferred choice, I understand that 2 drive failure is much better and safer but what I've thought of doing, and please correct me if I can't do it at all, I would like to put most of my storage 3/4 4TB hdds in z1, that will contain most of my media (movies / tv) that can be restored in case of 2 drive failure, but I would prefer to be able to keep it safe with 1 drive redundancy , and in another zpool, create a smaller capacity z2 vdev that will contain a more sensitive information (which will be backed up somewhere in the cloud and on another off site storage). will this setup protect my sensitive information with a 2 drive failure even if my larger storage zpool will die? or did I misunderstood the freenas configuration completely ?
3. adding new drives.
this part is really something the isn't clear for me, all the solutions for this made me think that the simple answer to this questions is just - No, once I setup my hdds I'm stuck with them, let me explain what I mean.
-> I've got 12 Sata ports on the MB, let say I've got 1 zpool with 3 vdevs:
vdev 1 ( 4 x 4TB)
vdev 2 (3 x 3TB)
vdev 3 (3 x 2TB)
all of them are raid-z2 for the 4TB , raid-z1 the rest
in this situation all 10 sata ports are occupied, which means I have only 2 additional sata ports, what I would like to do now . exchange the 3x3TB to another 4 x 4TB and add them to vdev 1. to do so I would need to find a place to store 16 TB of that ? ( 2x3tb + 2x4tv ?) and somehow create a new vdev? in the same zpool? but on the other hand I read in some places that you can't in any situation remove a vdev from a zpool. so I would need to create a new zpool ? but what with the other vdev in the same zpool, now I need to store 20TB somewhere but I don't see any situation where I have somewhere that I can store so much information, and I am not sure how safe it is to move all that data in such manner.
this was my initial way of thinking, that I think I understand wont work anyway.
what I understood might be possible is to change 1 drive each time in the 3TB vdev, and I won't see space increase until all drives will be with the same capacity, but then combining them into one vdev with the already existing vdev of 4tb isn't possible?
recovery, this part is really important to me so I want to make sure I understood it as it is.
1. hardware failure PSU / MB / CPU / Memory -> if no bad sectors were writing to the pool (hence the ECC memory should keep that from happening ?) I will change the faulty HW and all should work?
2. Moving to a brand new system , backup the configuration (which as I understood should be done regularly or is it over kill and should make sure to do it when I modify something in the configuration) connect the HDD to the new system, plugin a new FreeNAS usb OS, restore the configuration, and if everything is ok, the cluster should be back online ?
3. vdev / zpool failure , should I just start from scratch or is there a possibility to recover ?
any advise / suggestion is greatly appreciated, I really want to create a good reliable NAS solution this is why I am trying to get clear answers to my questions so I would be able avoid any surprises in the future once I will get the green light from someone here :) about the hw, i am planning do a lot of tests before the final NAS setup, but I want to be prepare with as much of information as possible, the forum posts are huge help that already answered a lot of other questions that I had.
Thanks,
