JBOD Installation?

[Bob Hyatt]

I did a quick search for JBOD and found a few entries, all noting issues. Has anyone successfully setup a JBOD FreeNAS?

My situation is I have 4 Icy Docks (or the like), each with 4 sata hard drives. All setup as JBOD. Some drives are 1TB, Most are 2TB, and there are a few 3TB sata drives.

My intention is to put all 16 drives in one case (Case Labs STH10, perhaps), with pc parts I already have. AND TO LEAVE THEM AS JBOD.

Once I am satisfied this is working, then I will consider Raid 6 or 10. But I don't want to install FreeNAS and have it formatting the drives. I want complete and full control of each drive.

Anything that would clear up this puzzle for me is appreciated.

 

[joeschmuck]

First, you don't want to format your drives according to your post so unless they are already in UFS format then you are out of luck. FreeNAS only uses UFS and ZFS format for the storage drives. You can mount FAT/FAT32/NTFS formatted drives but that would be for files transfers, not the main drives for your NAS.

As for the JBOD, if the Icy Dock has them all presented as a single drive entity at the SATA connector then it's just like having a single hard drive to the computer. As for the formatting, you could use UFS to run this setup. ZFS would reformat the drives and if you did go down the path of ZFS, your maximum capacity will be based on the smallest Icy Dock capacity. So if you had two Icy Docks with 4TB and one Icy Dock with 6TB and one Icy Dock with 3TB well your overall pool will only use 3TB from each Icy Dock, the rest is a waste of space. But you didn't really want to use ZFS based on your posting.

 

[Bob Hyatt]

The Icy Dock shows each drive separately. The drives are formated NTFS, EXT3, and EXT4.

The issue is NOT directly ZFS, but will FreeNAS allow me to mount the drives and add the content. e.g. will it expect the drive to be empty and try to format it, destroying the data.

I know i have duplicate files, as I made them deliberately. But until I 'collect' them all together and weed out the duplicates, I want to be certain I won't loose any data due to an overzealous OS.

I am wondering if the way to go is to 'pick' some of the disks where I know the content is also somewhere else (exact duplicate elsewhere, or a newer copy of the same files elsewhere) and let FreeNAS destroy the content in its configuration formatting.

Then I would one disk at a time, add the content I want to be saved into one centralized place, and when I have emptied those disks, add them into the FreeNas configuration.

How many disks can FreeNas add, one by one? Does FreeNas allow gradual increases?

If I understand the purpose of ZFS is to enable backups that can withstand drives that fail. e.g. As time goes by, and one drive fails, have I lost data? And when I replace that failed drive with another (probably differently sized) will that data be "put back"?

I ask because I cannot find a manual or a wiki that delves into such details. I won't be a 'test mouse' for this kind of thing. Point me to good to excellent documentation and I won't be asking such basic questions...

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS has rudimentary support for NTFS. You can mount them as read-only safely and copy files off the NTFS drives to another disk that FreeNAS uses. But there is no support for ext at all.

Generally speaking, the expected design is one where you put blank disks(or disks that can be formatted/repartitioned) into your server. Then you setup your pool or UFS RAID and copy data to the pool.

As for expanding ZFS, read the presentation in the noobie section(its a sticky). That will answer your question.

You are probably going to be disappointed after you read the presentation. But I'm not aware of any server design that can do what you want to do outright. They pretty much all start with a bunch of spare disks that you have to format. Your disks are already full.

 

[Bob Hyatt]

cyberjock,

As I continue my education in this arena, I swerve from one side (product) to another.

I do have some 'spare' drives that have never been used. So I could begin with those as the basis or root disk for the 'whatever' file system.

I can copy the contents of one drive full of data to this Wfs, then add it to the Wfs as a new drive to be formatted.

Then repeat for the next disk, and one by one the data would be copied, and the file system would grow until I have 'consumed' all the contents of the many disks I want to put into the system.

The issue I have, now, is that it appears that SAN and NAS are both much more than I need. I need a) a file server that has b) protections for the data files.

Right now I am examining GlusterFS, which has features far beyond my purposes, but I think I can dumb it down for my purposes.

A) A dedicated, high speed network NIC for each of the two computers I want to connect. My main pc, and the backup my data pc. Consider it a 'Direct Connect' server, NOT intended, today, for public consumption. Perhaps later.

B. My main pc will connect via a web interface to the server for 'normal' access. If necessary I will use the Ubuntu Linux tools to telnet, sftp, or whatever is required.

C. The backup my data server will only be turned on, as I need or desire. I might do a 'wake on lan' trigger, but then how to tell it to sleep? There will be a monitor, mouse etc only for the installation of the Ubuntu Server software and the Gluster FS software. I have never had to create a server before, so this will be interesting... This is why I continued to write to the Icy Dock 4 drive backup devices using USB.

D. I intend to put both pcs into one case, something like the two motherboard Case Labs TX10-D. One thing I like is I can use the parts I already have and only have to purchase a very few things (like the NICs). Yes, I understand the concern for ECC memory etc, but my experience has been pretty good with the USB backup tools since I began using them around 1998. I don't remember when I got my first usb backup device.

The 'other' thing I would have to purchase is multiple Sata 3 cards into which I plug each drive as I add it to the group / cluster of drives in the Gluster FS.

The adding of the data, and the disks will be tedious, but once I have them installed, I will have reserve capacity that will allow for versioning of files, perhaps 2 version?

If the connection is fast enough, I might use the data from the server, instead of from my main pc.

Best Regards, AraiBob

 

[joeschmuck]

@ Cyberjock, I'm a bit surprised that FreeNAS doesn't support EXT3/4 since FreeBSD does. Maybe it was stripped out?

@ Bob, If you do use ZFS files system you really need to use ECC RAM. The issue is your data could be corrupted during a scrub if the RAM has a stuck bit or bit issue. You may not be the wiser for a while. Having a good backup is great but if you write over you old backup with a new corrupt set of files well that isn't very good. And you may be aware of this danger already but so long as you know...

 

[cyberjock]

Adding single disks to ZFS isn't possible if redundancy is wanted. Read my guide(link in the sig). You can however add individual vdevs, so you could do groups of 6 disks in RAIDZ2 vdevs, but all part of 1 big pool. Honestly, I'm not seeing where you think that FreeNAS ias much more than you need. It is a file server with protection for data files. You can opt to do much more with it. Run jails, plugins, and all sorts of other file sharing options. I use it as a file server and nothing else. I actually use everything from my file server itself. I have a SSD boot disk in all of my systems and then they get all of their other data from the server. 100MB/sec to/from all of them with ease.

I have no experience with Gluster FS. As such, I can't tell you if what you are thinking about with regards to Gluster FS is actually possible or not. Nor can I tell you if it will even do what you want.

As for ECC, read the sticky about ECC. If you use non-ECC RAM and it goes bad it will trash not only your primary pool, but the backup pool too. So rely on USB backup devices all you want. They will all go down in a ball of fire if your non-ECC RAM fails. This has to do with how ZFS works. If you aren't willing to swallow that risk or go with ECC RAM then ZFS shouldn't be on your list. Every user that has had non-ECC RAM fail has seen the exact same result. ZFS isn't the past, it's the future. And ZFS needs ECC RAM unless you are okay with the risk.

 

[Bob Hyatt]

Cyberjock,

I know what ECC memory is from my mainframe days in the 1970s, but if the motherboard I intend to use does not support ECC, then I have to order MB, CPU (probably), and the ECC memory. I am a retired person with a relatively limited budget. So I am examining what my options are. I look for problems in order to decide if there is something I can do, within reason (including costs).

If a video gets one bit 'twisted' I won't normally notice it. If a song gets one bit twisted, I probably won't notice. I do want to know if such a thing is happening, so I can deal with the situation.

In looking for issues, I found a few described about FreeNAS in youtube. The persons were knowledgeable and explained the issue clearly, but one conclusion is the people creating and maintaining FreeNAS are doing a poor job enabling the support personnel to manage. Each 'complaint' tells me there are hundreds of cases in which something went wrong and fixing is very difficult.

I am looking for something simple to manage. This is why I no longer have Windows on the 6 pcs I have in the house. Windows allows bad things to happen and I was spending time each week fixing those things. Time I would rather spend relaxing and doing things I want to do. I dumped Windows, installed Ubuntu Linux, and have had very little 'maintenance' compared to Windows.

Can you assure me that I won't have to be fixing issues every week? in which if I make one mistake I lose all my data? In my career, a good part of my success was to take what was a complicated process or system and to gradually simplify it. Each improvement reduced the amount of time people had to deal with issues, increased throughput, and best of all for me, allowed me to move onto the next problem arena.

While this was good for my career, I steer clear of anything like that today. I want a simple system / process that does what I need, and does not make me tweak every week. Can you say that about FreeNAS? I think Not, however I did research it anyway because enough people did recommend it. So far, I am not impressed.

I am not done with my research. But my overriding principal is 'keep it simple, stupid". So far, FreeNAS is NOT simple...

 

[cyberjock]

Cyberjock,

I know what ECC memory is from my mainframe days in the 1970s, but if the motherboard I intend to use does not support ECC, then I have to order MB, CPU (probably), and the ECC memory. I am a retired person with a relatively limited budget. So I am examining what my options are. I look for problems in order to decide if there is something I can do, within reason (including costs).

You aren't alone with a limited budget. It's all about how much your data is worth to protect. Most people that are willing to go the extra mile for ZFS are a little more interested in protecting their data and will make that budget $100 bigger if it means better protection for their data. You already get to save money by not using a RAID controller, so its usually a win for the end user anyway.

If a video gets one bit 'twisted' I won't normally notice it. If a song gets one bit twisted, I probably won't notice. I do want to know if such a thing is happening, so I can deal with the situation.

The issue won't be one bit twisted. It will be complete annihilation of your pool and virtually all of your files will end up trashed. This is based on forum experience and is not trivially limited to a few bites in a few files.

In looking for issues, I found a few described about FreeNAS in youtube. The persons were knowledgeable and explained the issue clearly, but one conclusion is the people creating and maintaining FreeNAS are doing a poor job enabling the support personnel to manage. Each 'complaint' tells me there are hundreds of cases in which something went wrong and fixing is very difficult.

Honestly, I have yet to see a video on youtube discussing FreeNAS that actually provides meaningful and recommended tips that even remotely approximate what is various manuals for FreeNAS, ZFS, and FreeBSD. So I don't give them much credit at all. It's a pain my ass every day because people come here and argue "but the guy on youtube said I could do this with my circa 2005 hardware". And I have to spend hours on hours explaining to them that the youtube guys want hits and subscriptions. They could never do the necessary research, put a video together that is actually informative and correct, then actually make money on it. And you won't go back and blame the jerkoff on youtube if he gives you bad advice either. Because it won't really be his fault.

I am looking for something simple to manage. This is why I no longer have Windows on the 6 pcs I have in the house. Windows allows bad things to happen and I was spending time each week fixing those things. Time I would rather spend relaxing and doing things I want to do. I dumped Windows, installed Ubuntu Linux, and have had very little 'maintenance' compared to Windows.

Can you assure me that I won't have to be fixing issues every week? in which if I make one mistake I lose all my data? In my career, a good part of my success was to take what was a complicated process or system and to gradually simplify it. Each improvement reduced the amount of time people had to deal with issues, increased throughput, and best of all for me, allowed me to move onto the next problem arena.

While this was good for my career, I steer clear of anything like that today. I want a simple system / process that does what I need, and does not make me tweak every week. Can you say that about FreeNAS? I think Not, however I did research it anyway because enough people did recommend it. So far, I am not impressed.

I am not done with my research. But my overriding principal is 'keep it simple, stupid". So far, FreeNAS is NOT simple...

First, nobody here will "assure" you of anything. None of us care if you use ZFS, or go buy a ReadyNAS, or decide to throw your hard drives in the trashcan. I won't lose sleep over your lost data. I used to, but I gave up on that a long time ago. Too many people will believe the idiots on youtube before anyone in a forum. Even if everyone in the forum tries to explain that the youtube morons are just that.. morons.

Secondly, It's all about how much effort you want to put into understanding and managing the system. I can't remember the last time I had to log into my server to administer it. My first guess would be since the last time I upgraded to 9.1.1. If I had to think of the last time it wasn't for a software upgrade, disk replacement, or trying to setup something to troubleshoot something a forum user was having, I don't think I've done anything noteworthy in 6 months. Some people around here are still on 8.0.4 because they set it and forgot about it. 8.0.4 is 18+ months old. So it can absolutely be setup so you don't have to babysit it. It's just a matter of doing your homework and getting it right. Do regular scrubs, do regular SMART tests, setup SMART monitoring, setup the email function. If you want more, write custom scripts to monitor certain parameters. But there's no reason why you'd have to log in every week to make a tweak(and I have no idea what you'd think you'd need to change every week). If you set it up properly it should pretty much monitor itself. FreeNAS should email you if something is wrong.

And those jerkoff on youtube, they won't ever setup the server to do everything correctly. They'll just do some basic setup in a video and call it good.

 

[Bob Hyatt]

CyberJock,

Thank you for honest answers.

Let me clarify, I want:
a) a file server that has
b) protections for the data files
c) easy to install, add disks (varied in size), and maintain.

And does not require that I become a 'lab rat' to keep it running. I have done some 'exciting' programming over the years, but today I would prefer to NOT have to diagnose programming issues.

One of the issue systems groups have to deal with is disasters. If my motherboard should die, does that mean all my data (in non-standard formats) is lost? e.g., I rebuild my pc, install the OS, and FreeNAS, and connect my drives. What happens next? will it accept what already exists, or will it attempt to format?

Disaster thinking is a 'talent' that has saved me many issues. At work, I would hear of an issue, investigate it, code a solution and put it into production, and what seemed only days later the other applications are hit by the very thing I did a solution for. Our application kept on humming. Yes, I did inform them of the issue, in the early days, and they did nothing. Eventually, I stopped telling them, as it only seemed to make them angry. I had one manager say that I was diverting her programmers from more important (managed by her) tasks. So I stopped informing other groups.

My issue today is that too many programmers are 'pollyanna' types. They always think of the perfect system running their applications and when something outside of 'perfect' happens, they blame that outside force. These are people I don't work with. My systems worked because I addressed issues before the hurt our systems. Remember this one: Never let a crisis go to waste? I saw too many managers attempting to make a name for themselves with this one. Knowingly letting a failure happen so they could 'take command' and improve their status.

These issues are not new. But when I look at new technology (for my personal use), you can bet I will vett it at length. One thing I noticed about salesmen is they talk and focus about things that do not concern me. They want to talk about features that are not important to me, or I will seldom use. If the basics of what I have declared important and necessary are ignored, then I move on to the next product / salesman.

I do want to hear of successful applications, running well under normal situations. But what I really want to know is how well it runs under duress.

Example I saw online:
A data center move was being done. Two physical cabinets contain duplicate data were unplugged and moved. One powered up ok, the other did not. In the 'heat of the move' the one that failed was not fixed for 5 or so days and when brought up, the 'catch up' synchronize process failed. This is exactly the time it should have performed perfectly.

I demand it work its best when circumstances are poor, bad, broken, etc. I remember once being told that the average data flow for the month was xxx megabytes per minute. My response was that I don't give a shit about averages, I worry about the peaks. And eventually we learned we did have a limit on how much data we could send and receive, and it took months to get that fixed. We were working with 'almost' real time data, and having a 4 hour delay was more than I was willing to tolerate.

I would love to hear stories of success exactly when the conditions were at its poorest. When people were standing around with their mouth open and their mind off / closed. I am most concerned with going to all the trouble of migrating the data, only to lose it all just a few days later. and the data is in a format that is difficult or proprietary to read.

I began to check on what it would take to do ECC. Motherboard about $500, CPU about $500. 4 port Sata 3 cards from $125 to $400, each. So much for cheap.

I have encountered Open NFS. Another potential tool for my use.

One issue I have with RAID is their desire / demand that all disks on the card be the same size. In fact, the same size, brand, and model. Absurd. for a home user. Yes, it is a nice thing to have, but what will it cost?

Best regards, Bob Hyatt

 

[Bob Hyatt]

CyberJack,

I continued my research, based on your recommended components. I hope I picked the correct parts:'

as of October 21, 2013
Motherboard(s)
$ 151.99 Supermicro X9SCM-B LGA1155
Supports 2nd generation Intel Core i3 and Intel Xeon E3-1200 & v2 Series
SATA: 4x SATA2 Ports, Support RAID 0,1, 5,10; 2x SATA3 Ports, Supports RAID 0,1
4x 240pin DDR3-1600/1333 DIMM Slots, Supports up to 32GB ECC Unbuffered

CPU choices
$ 118.99 Intel Core i3-3220 Dual-Core Proc 3.3Ghz 3MB Cache LGA 1155 BX80637i33220
$ 276.75 Intel Xeon E3-1245V2 3.4GHz 4 Core Proc BX80637E31245V2
$ 60.32 Intel G2020 2.9GHz 5.0GT/s 3MB LGA 1155 CPU Processor BX80637G2020

Memory
$ 359.00 for 32GB : Kingston HyperX Blu 16GB Kit (2x8 GB Modules) 1600MHz 240-pin DDR3 Non-ECC CL10 Desktop Memory KHX1600C10D3B1K2

Power Supply
$ 0.00 Already have P C Power and Cooling Silencer Mark II 950W

Sata cards Pci-e
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - 2 connectors only
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - 2 connectors only
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - 2 connectors only
or
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 8-port SAS/SATA RAID PCI Express Controller. SERVERAID M1015 SAS/SATA CONTROLLER COMB-C. Serial
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 8-port SAS/SATA RAID PCI Express Controller. SERVERAID M1015 SAS/SATA CONTROLLER COMB-C. Serial

$ 13.91 each 3WARE Cable Multi-lane Internal Cable (SFF-8087) 4 sata connects Need 4.

hard drives,
$ 0.00 I already have 1TB, 2TB and 3TB drives (16 full of data, but with duplicate files and folders)
$ 0.00 OS drive (I have a velociraptor I am not using at the moment.
$ 0.00 first and second drive for the data is a WD Red 1TB, also not using at the moment.

Total is $1,235 without shipping, etc picking the most expensive parts in the list above

 

[Bob Hyatt]

CyberJock,

Earlier you said: "As for expanding ZFS, read the presentation in the noobie section(its a sticky). That will answer your question."

I am unable to find this sticky. This is one of the reasons I started this thread / topic.

Thanks, Bob Hyatt

 

[gpsguy]

Here's the direct link to cyberjock's presentation.

 

[Dusan]

$ 151.99 Supermicro X9SCM-B LGA1155
Supports 2nd generation Intel Core i3 and Intel Xeon E3-1200 & v2 Series
SATA: 4x SATA2 Ports, Support RAID 0,1, 5,10; 2x SATA3 Ports, Supports RAID 0,1
4x 240pin DDR3-1600/1333 DIMM Slots, Supports up to 32GB ECC Unbuffered

$ 359.00 for 32GB : Kingston HyperX Blu 16GB Kit (2x8 GB Modules) 1600MHz 240-pin DDR3 Non-ECC CL10 Desktop Memory KHX1600C10D3B1K2

The X9SCM will not work with the listed memory. You must use unregistered ECC memory with this motherboard.

$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - 2 connectors only
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - 2 connectors only
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - 2 connectors only
or
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 8-port SAS/SATA RAID PCI Express Controller. SERVERAID M1015 SAS/SATA CONTROLLER COMB-C. Serial
$ 129.00 each IBM ServeRAID M1015 8-port SAS/SATA RAID PCI Express Controller. SERVERAID M1015 SAS/SATA CONTROLLER COMB-C. Serial

Yes, the M1015 has "only" two connectors, but you can connect up to 8 SATA drives (4 per one SFF8087 connector) to the controller via breakout cables (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=sff8087 sata), or even more drives using SAS expanders.

 

[joeschmuck]

Bob, you asked what happens if your MB becomes toast. All you need to do it take your drives and connect them to any MB with at least 6GB RAM (looks like 6GB will become the minimum required to safely run FreeNAS) and grab a USB flash drive, load FreeNAS and Auto-Import you ZFS Pool. It will work fine and this is why ZFS wants to talk directly to each hard drive, no special RAID controller. This is one of the main reasons I chose FreeNAS as my NAS solution.

So you are not limited to specific hardware, you just need to be able to connect up all your drives for each pool you create.

 

[Bob Hyatt]

JoeSchmuck and CyberJock,

Thanks for pointing me to the documenatation. A great help. I have continued my research, in particular, ZFS. ZFS seems to be at the root of several products, so I examined that further.

First thing I notices is it has RaidZ1 and RaidZ2, and it explicitly says do not install the drives onto RAID cards. I watched some of the videos in which the basics and features were described. Sounds good. SO the next question was if so many products are using ZFS, what differentiates one product from another? Perhaps I should use ZFS and ignore all the other products that use ZFS as its base?

More confusing was to read Open ZFS's website in which it seems it is not quite ready. The issue is the deliberate confusion over CDDC? and the Free Software Foundations CopyLeft or GPL.

It appears ZFS was developed for Sun System's hardware, and one of Open ZFS's jobs is to migrate it over to Linux's ways. I can't tell if they are done with that migration, but they do encourage you to download. Annoying, but I will continue my analysis. I have months to figure it out.

Please help me understand what makes FreeNAS the best of the products that use ZFS as its base?

Regards, Bob Hyatt

 

[John M. Długosz]

The issue I have, now, is that it appears that SAN and NAS are both much more than I need. I need a) a file server that has b) protections for the data files.

Right now I am examining GlusterFS, which has features far beyond my purposes, but I think I can dumb it down for my purposes.

Have you looked at Btrfs? It has Linux kernel support, and features data integrity. Combine that with the LVM and mdadm to manually lay out something like this (link).

The best protection is more backups, with error detection so you can tell if the copy is correct.

 

[John M. Długosz]

I began to check on what it would take to do ECC. Motherboard about $500, CPU about $500. 4 port Sata 3 cards from $125 to $400, each. So much for cheap.

Here (link) is a recently purchased parts list and my own cost analysis. Read some of the hardware recommendation threads: Supermicro X9 or X10 series seems to be the current top choice. Mine is not the cheapest, at $240, and includes 14 SATA ports. You'll also see the recommended LSI SAS controller to pick up on ebay for around $100 (16 SATA ports when you add the $10 break-out cable, IIRC).

If you want to run on cheaper/hand-me-down stuff, check out NAS4Free, the Chevy to FreeNAS's Mercedes.

Please help me understand what makes FreeNAS the best of the products that use ZFS as its base?

Depends on what you mean by Best. It (the software) is free, stable and robust, currently maintained and developed, and has an active support forum. The other free "canned" solutions I've seen (other than FreeNAS and NAS4Free) are free versions of commercial products and have limitations and restrictions. Using either of those instead of a home-brew *Nix installation (Linux or BSD) that happens to include ZFS, means the nice web front-end for administration, and a ready-to-run boot image. OTOH, if you want to use ZFS on partitions rather than whole drives to mix-and-match sizes and do wonky things not supported by FreeNAS, you can use the full *Nix install and perhaps even compile the ZFS Fuse driver yourself with the relevant options enabled.

But maybe you don't want ZFS at all. You have a list of requirements, some of which are met very well by ZFS and others that ZFS is hostile to. I wish there was something out there that's not a pig not originally meant for home/soho use. As a professional developer, I figure it would take a year of full-time effort to write something, whether mostly new code or time learning enough about existing things to splice them together, or some combination. But I don't have time for that, and I have other wish-I-could projects way ahead of it.

Sorry for rambling. I went through all this about two months ahead of you.

—John

 

[Bob Hyatt]

Have you looked at Btrfs? It has Linux kernel support, and features data integrity. Combine that with the LVM and mdadm to manually lay out something like this (link).

The best protection is more backups, with error detection so you can tell if the copy is correct.

John, I just spent the last day looking at btrfs. Videos and online concur. It is not ready for prime time. Pity, I use Linux (Ubuntu 13.04) at home and it would have fit into my current systems nicely. However, the latest news and releases may have fixed some of the outstanding issues (no equal to ZFS's RaidZ1 and RaidZ2).

Best regards, Bob Hyatt

 

[Bob Hyatt]

Here (link) is a recently purchased parts list and my own cost analysis. Read some of the hardware recommendation threads: Supermicro X9 or X10 series seems to be the current top choice. Mine is not the cheapest, at $240, and includes 14 SATA ports. You'll also see the recommended LSI SAS controller to pick up on ebay for around $100 (16 SATA ports when you add the $10 break-out cable, IIRC).

If you want to run on cheaper/hand-me-down stuff, check out NAS4Free, the Chevy to FreeNAS's Mercedes.

Depends on what you mean by Best. It (the software) is free, stable and robust, currently maintained and developed, and has an active support forum. The other free "canned" solutions I've seen (other than FreeNAS and NAS4Free) are free versions of commercial products and have limitations and restrictions. Using either of those instead of a home-brew *Nix installation (Linux or BSD) that happens to include ZFS, means the nice web front-end for administration, and a ready-to-run boot image. OTOH, if you want to use ZFS on partitions rather than whole drives to mix-and-match sizes and do wonky things not supported by FreeNAS, you can use the full *Nix install and perhaps even compile the ZFS Fuse driver yourself with the relevant options enabled.

But maybe you don't want ZFS at all. You have a list of requirements, some of which are met very well by ZFS and others that ZFS is hostile to. I wish there was something out there that's not a pig not originally meant for home/soho use. As a professional developer, I figure it would take a year of full-time effort to write something, whether mostly new code or time learning enough about existing things to splice them together, or some combination. But I don't have time for that, and I have other wish-I-could projects way ahead of it.

Sorry for rambling. I went through all this about two months ahead of you.

—John

John,

I have been puzzling over this issue for months, and until I heard of ZFS I doubted I could do anything, cheap. I have briefly examined, NFS, ZFS, BTRFS, FreeNAS, NAS4Free, OpenZFS, Gluster, iSCSI, OpenMediaVault, Open NFS, unRAID, and a few more I can't remember right this moment.

Perhaps a little history... I got my AAS in CS in 1970. There was no four year program at the time. When I was 15 or so, I read about hexadecimal and octal computer math and memory methods. Fascinating.

I started working before my graduation and 37 years later, decided to retire. Along the way I used at least 36 computer languages on the job (at least that is how many I counted once on my resume). I might be an exceptional programmer (trying to be shy about my abilities, eh), but it turned out I was exceptional at getting projects done, on time and under budget. I read some papers over the years and it seems that 2/3rd of all IT projects fail. Either time, or cost, or both failed. Where my track record of successful projects was in the high 90 percent. Not perfect, as I can think of a few in which the target was missed, due to a 'sub-contractor' who lied about their capabilities...

One of my principals is KISS. I took over what was difficult, error prone, buggy, abortive systems, and within a few months (usually) I had made enough changes that the systems could be turned over to someone for 'maintenance'.

As I did more 'administrative' stuff, I did a lot less coding. Annoying, as I did love the analysis and coding process.

Now retired, I have 'other' things on my mind, and while I can 'do' things, I would prefer to relax.

For example, I have 3 pcs, 3 laptops and I don't know how many 'tablets' and 'pads' in my house. The 3 pcs and laptops all had Windows 7 installed. And every month I had to 'repair' someone's lack of experience or control online, which caused the pc to be relatively useless. Complain, complain. this was in 2010. I have used Windows (not because I loved it, but because I could usually get the thing I needed done) since 1993 (remember Win 3.1?).

One of the things I noticed over the years, that is a sign there is a problem on my pc, is I will get daily windows updates. DAILY. after enough of that, one day the pc will not boot and I will have to reinstall the OS, and one by one, the apps I actually use. Tedious. Further, in 2010, we had power outages that had already required me to reinstall Windows 7 Ultimate, plus the applications I use, two times!

TO fix that issue of electrical outages, I purchased a UPS. the APC Smart UPS 2200. Once that was in, things got better. But I was getting the daily updates. So, I decided to try Linux (my 4th try), with Ubuntu only on my main pc. It worked ok, and over time I found replacements for the applications I had been using, for years on Windows. Turned out I saved money with them because none of them cost money. So far, so good. Only one application I could not find a replacement for, but using WINE, I could run that application (my backup tool named Vice-Versa Pro).

After a few months, where I continued to get maintenance demands for the other Windows PCs and laptops, I began to switch them one by one to Ubuntu Linux. Amazing, NO MORE maintenance projects! Yes, there were the usual issues of 'how do I do this?', but these were moments of work, versus hours. What made it work for me, was that the family do NOT really use the PC. They use Firefox browser, the music player, and once in a while create a document.

So, after all that windbag stuff, where does that leave me today? The issue began with I had been making backups, the KISS way. Icy Docks, with 4 sata drives in them were as simple as I could get, and the cost was not large. But for safety's sake, I ended up with about 3 copies. e.g. the original on my pc, and 3 copies. In addition, on those backups are files that are no longer on my PC.

SO what to do? That is what lead me to this, now public, search for a good system and process that does not expect I be a systems administrator 4 hours a day!

What I was hoping for was a OS and / or File System combination I could use on the existing hardware I already have. When I rebuilt / upgraded my current pc, I took the parts out and put them aside, and began to consider what I could do with them that would protect the data, securely. They are good parts, not worn out, but are 'enthusiast quality'. Not server quality.

The issue I run across today, is the people supporting their application (like FreeNAS) are not from the home user or home business framework. They simply don't get the issues. If a person spends 3 hours a day being a systems administrator, how can that person run a business? That is what is missing from their perspectives. They don't mind taking 9 hours on a Saturday to do some thing on their system.

Further, They also don't mind giving instructions in 'slfjasd;j speak' that is designed to intimidate, not inform. I was so used to that at work, that I just ignored the chaff and got to the main issue.

Today, that 'main issue' is there are lots of competing products or services, using similar or same file systems, each hoping to 'catch' a new customer. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't want to be a CUSTOMER. I want to be a USER. As in, a television user. Set it up, use it, forget it.

But one issue with 'computers' and the software. ALL of them have a short lifecycle! I read an article discussing the idea of 'data' surviving for more than just a few months. They determined that if you update a modern disk (SATA), then remove it from your PC, and put it in a place where it won't get 'static attacked', the data is likely to survive 50 years. Sounds good, eh? However, will you be able to plug that disk into your system in 50 years? Unlikely...

And each time there is a 'change' in methods or hardware, the older stuff tends to get left behind. To copy data onto the new stuff can be quite the challenge.

In my case, today, I have 16 drives. smallest is 1TB, a bunch of 2TB, and a few 3TB. With about 3 copies of the same files among them. Written in NTFS, EXT3 and EXT4. If I use ZFS, I would do a small project to ensure that have those drives have the latest copy of the files I want to keep. Then put the now empty half of the drives into the ZFS system, where they would all be overwritten, formatted, etc. Then via usb, copy the copies of the files I have into the ZFS system. IN order to ensure that I can get my data out someday, I would then 'have to' put the remaining half of drives into the ZFS device and then copy all the data from one 'archive' to the new, other archive.

Whew, Now what? In two or three years a new 'thing' comes out, and I have to migrate all my data, again? That is NOT how I like to do business.

So, Lots of questions with few good answers.

Best regards, Bob Hyatt