Hardware setup for freenas

[Bibinkurien]

Hi,

I am trying to figure out the hardware raid setup for freensas with zfs. We do have 6x600 sas disks with raid controller. We are looking to configure zpool with raidz2 and it should need 4 vdevs. I am thinking what hardware(controller) raid is possible for this configuration. I think we can cofigure one disk for freenas configuraion and other for zfs setup. Please advice me the possible configuration.

Thanks

 

[anodos]

Hi,

I am trying to figure out the hardware raid setup for freensas with zfs. We do have 6x600 sas disks with raid controller. We are looking to configure zpool with raidz2 and it should need 4 vdevs. I am thinking what hardware(controller) raid is possible for this configuration. I think we can cofigure one disk for freenas configuraion and other for zfs setup. Please advice me the possible configuration.

Thanks

You don't use hardware RAID with ZFS. See here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

 

[danb35]

What @anodos said. And how did you conclude that you need 4 vdevs for your 6 disks? I suspect you're using that term incorrectly, which is going to lead to some confusion.

I think we can cofigure one disk for freenas configuraion and other for zfs setup.

I have no idea what you mean by this. FreeNAS is designed and intended to be installed to a small (8-16 GB) flash device, which holds all the software and configuration data. You then use your disks for storage.

 

[Bibinkurien]

I have talked about the controller raid configuration. I think zfs needs to communicate directly with disks. I think to use something like LSI controller flashed in 'IT' mode and that be the best way to configure

 

[jgreco]

Yes. Please feel free to look at the LSI sticky for specific advice.

 

[Bibinkurien]

Okay Thanks. But I have noticed that unable to use the freenas installed drive free space for zpool and it is making loss of the diskspace. Any advice

 

[danb35]

Yes, refer to my previous post here:

FreeNAS is designed and intended to be installed to a small (8-16 GB) flash device, which holds all the software and configuration data. You then use your disks for storage.

 

[jgreco]

Okay Thanks. But I have noticed that unable to use the freenas installed drive free space for zpool and it is making loss of the diskspace. Any advice

FreeNAS is intended to be installed on a separate boot device of some sort; it is designed to operate as an appliance. Typically you install it on a SATA DOM ("Disk on Module"), USB flash device, or maybe a small SATA SSD. It is intentionally designed to separate the operating system from the storage array.

 

[Bibinkurien]

Okay I got the point. we are looking to use small SATA SSD for freenas installation. we can create raid for the zpool drives. But installation drive is not using for the zpool raid setup. My doubt is to make any issue for the zpool storage when the freenas installation drive become fails.

 

[danb35]

If you install FreeNAS 9.3, your boot drive is also a ZFS pool. You can, if you choose, create a mirror with two (or more) drives, which will let your system keep running (and might even let it boot) if one of the drives fails. You can also (and you should) download your config file to a safe place. Then, if/when your boot drive fails, you only need to do a fresh install to a new drive, upload the saved config file, and you're in business.

Edit: As @jgreco noted above, FreeNAS is designed so that the boot device is completely separate from your data. A failure of the boot device won't affect your data at all.