Just checking before jumping in

[obarthelemy]

Hi.

I've outgrown my current single 3TB drive, so I'm looking for the right way to setup a multi-HD server. I'd be OK doing that in Windows, but it seems FreeNAS is much better suited, though I'm a bit leery of hardware and software issues. Could someone please confirm that the hardware I picked is OK (it should be), and that what I want to do is reasonable ?

I'm looking to serve:
- a small amount of high-value personal files (a few MBs of docs)
- also a small amount of pictures, home videos (a few GBs)
- my painstakingly ripped CD collection (about 2k CDs, FLAC)
- my less painstakingly acquired but very large collection of movies and series.

My current "server" (a repurposed netbook) is running
- a DLNA server
- uTorrent
- Teamviewer (for remote access)
- I'd like to add a VPN to that list.
- weekly full backups to a separate disk, no journalling just a straight copy. My high-value files and home pics/movies are also occasionnaly backed up to a couple of USB HDs and burnt to DVDs.
- I'd love to be able to do a local backup of my Dropbox and Google Drive. It seems the only way to do that is through my Windows PC, either by configuring DropBox/GDrive to directly use a network share, or by setting up a job to frequently copy my Windows PC's DropBox and GDrive folders onto the server ? That's OK, though I would prefer a direct-to-server, automated, straight-from-the-cloud backup.

I'm quite competent with Windows and building PCs, but I've been up to now majorly turned off by hardware compatibilities and documentation issues with Linux. It does seem that FreeNAS can do what I want, and judging from the "getting started" guide, the documentation is good.

I'm not looking for high performance at all, I'm the only user and my current Netbook + USB2 HD is OK except for very slow backups (I'm ashamed to admit I'm doing SyncToy syncs as backups right now ^^). I'm not looking for high availability nor fault tolerance. I'm looking for reliability above all, and simplicity.

The hardware config I'm thinking of is:
Case+PSU: Advance 3906B, the umpteenth avatar of the Antec Element Q, Apex MII-008... smallest case with room for 3x3.5" HDs, I'm starting off with 2 HDs. PSU potentially crappy ?
Motherboard: ASROCK E350M1/USB3: cheapest mini-ITX board I could find with 4 SATA, 2xUSB3, 1xeSATA. The Realtek RTL8111E LAN chip is listed in the supported hardware, I could not find any reference to the E350 CPU nor AMD A50M chipset though. Found via Google a guy selling a FreeNAS system based on this MB, so it's probably OK ? USB3 or eSATA for backups.
RAM: 2x G.Skill Value DDR3 4 Go PC10600. 6+GB is required, according to the starter guide. Seems like an awful lot but it's cheap anyway.
HD: 2x Seagate Barracuda SATA III 6 Gb/s - 3TB. I'll use my two current HDs for the backups, so I'l have 2x3TB in the server, and 2x3TB for backups. The Seagates use 4k Advanced Format, which seems supported ?
Boot: Ryval Mini USB Key - 8 GB. Same price as 4GB. Very small key, less chance to rip/break it off. Performance irrelevant ?

Questions:
Can FreeNAS do JBOD ? I'd rather not do RAID0 as it is more risky than JBOD and I don't need the performance, and any other level of RAID would be vastly overkill.
Will there be an easy way to setup rsync backups to the 2 external backup disks ? Or will I need to manually split the backups and run 2 distinct backup jobs, one for each backup HD ?
Will those backups disks be readable as-is on another system if my server burns down ?
Is backing up to non-ZFS drives a realistic option ? I'd rather use ext4 or even NTFS so that in a pinch I can read my backups off my Windows PCs ?
Given how rudimentary my needs are, am I better off using a straight Linux install ? Or even just sticking with Windows, the $100 cost is quickly amortized if using another OS eats up more than 5 hours ?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Olivier.

 

[sysfu]

Questions:
Can FreeNAS do JBOD ? I'd rather not do RAID0 as it is more risky than JBOD and I don't need the performance, and any other level of RAID would be vastly overkill.

Yes. Just create a volume on each disk, using only a single disk for each volume. (or "pool" in zfs command line terminology)

Will there be an easy way to setup rsync backups to the 2 external backup disks ? Or will I need to manually split the backups and run 2 distinct backup jobs, one for each backup HD ?

Not sure I understand the question about "splitting" the backups, however FreeNAS comes with an rsync job scheduler that is configurable via the GUI. Haven't used to setup any rsync jobs to local disks myself but imagine it can be done.

Will those backups disks be readable as-is on another system if my server burns down ?

Yes, assuming they are the same or lower ZFS version. I've switched back and forth between FreeNAS and zfsonlinux using the same zfs disk arrays no problem. Just try to remember to export/detach your pools/volumes first before switching.

Is backing up to non-ZFS drives a realistic option ? I'd rather use ext4 or even NTFS so that in a pinch I can read my backups off my Windows PCs ?

Of course it is over the network, however you did not specify if you want to automate this process or if you want to attach any of the disks locally, via eSATA for example. That might get more complicated and I'm not sure what ability a FreeNAS system has to write to those file-systems.

Given how rudimentary my needs are, am I better off using a straight Linux install ? Or even just sticking with Windows, the $100 cost is quickly amortized if using another OS eats up more than 5 hours ?

If you already have a good understanding of ZFS and prefer the command line over a web GUI for most operations then maybe a headless linux installation might suit you better. In my experience FreeNAS makes for a more elegant system which brings less administrative setup and maintenance hassle than a headless linux install.

 

[obarthelemy]

Thank you for your answer.

The "splitting" question was: If I have a single 6TB volume spanning 2 x 3 TB HDs, can I do backups to 2 discrete, locally-attached, external 3 TB HDs, that I will connect one after the other since my PC only has 1 eSATA port ? I need both the backup to be smart enough to wait until I swap disks, and to make each disk stand-alone, so I can read it without needing the other one.

Since I have no understanding of ZFS whatsoever, I think I'll try something else instead, though.