Moving from WHSv1 to FreeNAS - Newbie Questions

[AzJazz]

Hi!

I have been running MS Windows Home Server (v1) for quite a few years now. I am starting to have hard drive issues on my WHS, and may be close to failure. I will need to back everything up. Since this opens up an opportunity to start fresh, and WHSv1 is totally unsupported these days, I decided to look into FreeNAS to get into the 21st Century.

Booting my existing WHSv1 box to FreeNAS 9.3.x went pretty smoothly. I know that I need to add more memory (I have 2 GB now), and I only have a single-core 2.0 GHZ Celeron processor. Everything seems to run OK right now, though - so that's a very good sign.

I don't plan on doing much exciting stuff on my NAS - Just file storage and storing daily PC backups. I may look into media streaming, but it isn't needed and may not work with my existing A/V equipment, anyways.

So, here are a few "newbie" questions:

1. I will be upgrading my memory to at least 4GB, and try for 8GB (I think my HP EX485 only accepts non-ECC). Where will I see the "hit" if I only go with 4GB of RAM?
2. What performance issues will I see by using the single-core 2.0 GHz Celeron processor?
3. I have a 32 GB Sandisk USB 3.0 thumbdrive for my FreeNAS boot image. I'm assuming that I will still need to leave it inserted after booting, correct? The reason I ask is because the thumb drive gets warm, and I would think I would have better life out of it if it isn't powered 24/7/365. I'm not sure how well thumb drives are designed to handle being powered continuously.
4. One of the most useful features (for me) of WHSv1 was folder-specific duplication. This would allow me to do full data duplication on a user-by-user basis. So, for example, I could duplicate all my data and my PC backups, but not my movies or my brother's data. The duplicated data was always placed on a different hard drive for redundancy. Does FreeNAS have this capability? (I haven't seen anything like it in the documentation).

Thanks!

AzJazz

 

[cyberjock]

Frankly, if you can't go to 8GB of ECC, then FreeNAS really isn't for you.

If you were to stick with 4GB of RAM you'll see the hit in reliability and performance. Reliability is a problem because we've seen people lose *all* of their data with insufficient RAM (hence I said above if you can't do 8Gb of RAM then FreeNAS isn't for you).

Read our stickies and follow our recommendations. You've got much more to learn before you throw your data on FreeNAS and expect it to be safe. There's dozens of ways to slit your own throat unwillingly. Already had 2 cases today....

 

[AzJazz]

OK, thanks @cyberjock - but, that's a bummer. I guess I'm stuck with WHS. I was hoping to use my existing 4 drive enclosure that still works fine, and just buy a couple of new hard drives.

I don't have $1K+ available to throw into building a new system from scratch.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I am not so sure you have to spend quite that much. But upgrading your processor, motherboard, and memory would be mandatory.

 

[Whattteva]

It's not as much as people think.
I recently got a SuperMicro barebones chassis + 2 x 8 GB RAM + i3 4160 for only $662 including S/H from NewEgg.

 

[depasseg]

Check out this thread for a ~$350 box:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cheapest-way-to-build-a-freenas.26903

As for the duplicated data, yes, FreeNAS has it. There are varying degrees of data protection. You can create a pool with 2 drives that mirror each other, as well as others that contain multiple drives with some of that capacity providing parity info which allows one or more drive failures without loss of data.

 

[AzJazz]

Thanks for the tips on a more cost-effective build, @depasseg! Cost is a big driver right now - Otherwise, I'd be OK with putting more $$$ into my NAS.

Yes, I saw that FreeNAS does disk-level duplication. The WHS solution was at a finer grain, effectively duplicating just a folder (share?) at a time in the NAS. That was very efficient from a storage standpoint - I didn't need to duplicate an entire drive if only 25% of my data needed to be duplicated.

Is something like that supported by FreeNAS?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Thanks for the tips on a more cost-effective build, @depasseg! Cost is a big driver right now - Otherwise, I'd be OK with putting more $$$ into my NAS.

Yes, I saw that FreeNAS does disk-level duplication. The WHS solution was at a finer grain, effectively duplicating just a folder (share?) at a time in the NAS. That was very efficient from a storage standpoint - I didn't need to duplicate an entire drive if only 25% of my data needed to be duplicated.

Is something like that supported by FreeNAS?

Dedup in FreeNAS isn't something most users need. You will need a ton of RAM to be able to use it, like 100+ gigs. So weigh the cost of buying enough ram or buying more disks to meet the same size comparison.

 

[AzJazz]

Hi, @SweetAndLow - I hadn't heard of dedup before, so I checked it out. While dedup is an interesting (and, apparently expensive and risky) concept, I don't think that was what I was looking for.

That said, if the experts here aren't immediately saying "Sure!" to my question about replicating just a subset of single FreeNAS share folders, I'm going to guess that the answer is probably "Nope."

Since there may be viable options for building a FreeNAS system somewhat cheap, I will still look into a purchase. I just hope my current WHS drives hold out long enough ...

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

You could use the BTsync or Crashplan plugin to backup folders to your NAS.

 

[danb35]

Yes, I saw that FreeNAS does disk-level duplication. The WHS solution was at a finer grain, effectively duplicating just a folder (share?) at a time in the NAS. That was very efficient from a storage standpoint - I didn't need to duplicate an entire drive if only 25% of my data needed to be duplicated.

Under ZFS, volumes and datasets support a property of "copies=n", which does just what it says--sets how many copies of the data will be kept. Datasets can be used like directories, so this is pretty close to what you're looking for. There are a couple of limitations, though. First, you'd have to set this at the command line--there's no way to set it in the GUI. Second, if you have a single-disk pool, it won't do you any good at all if that disk fails. It will help in the event of bad sectors in the middle of your data, though.

 

[AzJazz]

Thanks, everybody - I'm still planning on going to FreeNAS, and have been looking into the enclosures and stuff.

I probably should have posted this about my WHS question originally, since I've heard that a picture is worth 1k words. That way, I can be sure that we are all on the same page:

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I currently have 3 drives in my WHS NAS. The way that WHSv1 works, all the data in the "USER_1" shared folder and all the data in the "Public" shared folder will be duplicated behind the scenes. USER_2 and USER_3 data will not be duplicated.

All the data in WHSv1 appears in a single expandable data pool. There is no visible separation between the drives, as far as the user is concerned. So, written data could appear on any of the 3 drives. It can also be shifted to another drive at anytime, when the WHS does its version of drive balancing.

However, for the two duplicated folders above, the WHS will guarantee that the duplicated data will be located on a physically different drive than the original data. So, if I lose one drive, I won't lose any of my duplicated data.

Once a folder is selected to be duplicated, WHS does the duplication without further user interaction. File addition/modification/deletion are all managed and synced by WHSv1.

This is efficient from a storage standpoint - I only need to duplicate the folders that I want extra protection for. I don't need to duplicate entire drives if I only want to duplicate 30% of my data.

Now, I know that FreeNAS is a totally different and more robust architecture.

My question is whether a similar functionality to this is available in FreeNAS?

Thanks again,

AzJazz​

 

[Ericloewe]

My question is whether a similar functionality to this is available in FreeNAS?

Thanks again,

AzJazz​

No.

WHS had a rather unique feature set. Unfortunately, it was complicated, messy and really prone to nasty bugs. It was so bad that WHS 2011 reverted to a bog-standard NTFS solution.

For details about ZFS, I recommend Cyberjock's guide (link is in my sig).

 

[diedrichg]

I currently have 3 drives in my WHS NAS. The way that WHSv1 works, all the data in the "USER_1" shared folder and all the data in the "Public" shared folder will be duplicated behind the scenes. USER_2 and USER_3 data will not be duplicated.

You pretty much need to unlearn what you know about WHS and do not apply that to FreeNAS. Your data is either on FreeNAS it it's not, there are various setups for data being striped across drives and your data to remain intact when a drive fails.

 

[AzJazz]

OK, thanks for the replies, everyone! Very helpful!

@cyberjock and @Ericloewe - Thanks for the pointer to the FreeNAS PPT guide. It has clearly explained a lot of stuff I didn't find in my other FreeNAS research.

I was suspecting that the WHS-style of data duplication may not have a corollary in the FreeNAS world, but I wanted to make sure I knew the FreeNAS capabilities before jumping in.

I'll be continuing my research ... I hope I'll be able to get something running in a few months after saving up the $$$. Hopefully, my WHS won't bite the dust before then. Getting nervous, though ... I have seen a few hard drive overheat warnings. :(

Cheers,

AJ