FreeNAS raid type question

[djmulder]

Hey there,

I have in my head to step away from my normal NAS (a Drobo 5N, old version) to make my small VMware server a hybrid between VMware (although I'm looking at Qemu/KVM) and NAS.

Why? Well the simplest answer is: finance, my Drobo is 5 slots and currently has 5x6TB disks. Going for the next step is making it more and more expensive, so I'd want to spread the cost by going to an enclosure with 8 disks.

So I've been looking at FreeNAS, but I'm not entirely sure if it offers the same as my Drobo: for my Drobo it doesn't matter what size or type of harddisk I shove in there, it will always make it redundant, sure at some configurations there's more loss than other configurations but I never have to care about doing some weird setup.

So is FreeNAS capable of doing the same? Like example with my drobo: I gradually upgraded to 5x6TB, like no more than a year ago I was on 2x 3TB and 3x6TB, I just added the 2x 6TB and the Drobo itself added the extra storage without any interaction of myself.

 

[Redcoat]

Welcome to the forum.

Take a look at the document found here https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/introduction-to-zfs.111/ for a primer on ZFS. This should answer some of your questions - FreeNAS does require more pre-planning, apparently, than your Drobo, in order to optimize data protection.

 

[jgreco]

It's not the same as your Drobo.

ZFS is a high performance enterprise file system that's really targeted at the high end, with a sysadmin who has some understanding of what's going on. You generally make virtual devices (vdevs) out of like-sized devices to implement either mirroring or RAID-like data protection, and then create a storage pool out of multiple vdevs. When Sun created ZFS, they expected it would be managed by a professional sysadmin in an enterprise environment, with capacity planning done at the system level, data resilience as a requirement, and high performance as an expectation. This has never translated seamlessly to the small scale SOHO or hobbyist market, but there's sufficient help available out here, and the FreeNAS system also does a lot of "simplification" to make ZFS accessible to a small scale user who is willing to learn about it.

The Drobo is a ~~low performance device that tries to use software tricks to make storage accessible to people who are not interested in the details of how it works.

There are volumes of information out here in the forums to help newcomers to FreeNAS figure all this out.

As you are talking virtualization, please be aware that this is a complicated topic in itself, and adds some significant risk. You haven't outlined any of your hardware but I will point you at both the warning and what's known to be a safe-ish path.

 

[djmulder]

It's not the same as your Drobo.

ZFS is a high performance enterprise file system that's really targeted at the high end, with a sysadmin who has some understanding of what's going on. You generally make virtual devices (vdevs) out of like-sized devices to implement either mirroring or RAID-like data protection, and then create a storage pool out of multiple vdevs. When Sun created ZFS, they expected it would be managed by a professional sysadmin in an enterprise environment, with capacity planning done at the system level, data resilience as a requirement, and high performance as an expectation. This has never translated seamlessly to the small scale SOHO or hobbyist market, but there's sufficient help available out here, and the FreeNAS system also does a lot of "simplification" to make ZFS accessible to a small scale user who is willing to learn about it.

The Drobo is a ~~low performance device that tries to use software tricks to make storage accessible to people who are not interested in the details of how it works.

There are volumes of information out here in the forums to help newcomers to FreeNAS figure all this out.

As you are talking virtualization, please be aware that this is a complicated topic in itself, and adds some significant risk. You haven't outlined any of your hardware but I will point you at both the warning and what's known to be a safe-ish path.

thx for the info I'm now reading up on that pdf linked by Redcoat

hardware, I already read up on that and have the hardware semi- in place (again it's going to be a hybrid, have to receive the SAS card still)

Welcome to the forum.

Take a look at the document found here https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/introduction-to-zfs.111/ for a primer on ZFS. This should answer some of your questions - FreeNAS does require more pre-planning, apparently, than your Drobo, in order to optimize data protection.

thx reading now :)