New to FreeNAS and having 2 issues with initial setup

Big Ry

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First redundandancy - @subhuman already hinted you at "Storage Spaces". Then when you have a redundant volume, right-click ... sharing.
Storage Spaces and "Share this Folder" are two entirely different things. I was asking for clarification on the latter as you both, apparently, incorrectly stated that I could use this as a solution for my redundant array of disks.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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I don't understand what you are implying. With FreeNAS, too, creating a redundant volume from disks and sharing that volume over a suitable protocol are two completely different things. That's how storage and networking works.

You can in Windows create a mirror of two disks so you have redundant storage. You can create a folder on that volume and share that.
In FreeNAS you create a redundant pool from two or more disk, mirror or RAIDZ1, then create a dataset on that pool, than share that.

Exactly the same steps with different underlying technology.
 

Big Ry

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But you are seriously expecting your hacked together FreeNAS in VM without pass-through to be more reliable than the native Windows solution? Well, I don't.

And lastly, nobody demanded you spend $$$ on some big iron as an entrance fee to this illustre club here. But you do seem to be missing the difference between servers and desktop systems. Servers need not be big, but they are the machines that run 24x7 in a closet or the basement. In contrast to your work system which is expected to be switched off when not used, occasionally crash or if (hopefully) not, being rebooted nonetheless to "clean up" things ...
FreeNAS is not a desktop application but a server operating system. It's supposed to sit in the closet without a monitor and keyboard attached and quietly provide ressources. That is true even when you put an extra layer of ESXi or Windows Server beneath it.

Get a used HP Microserver Gen8 and 16 G of RAM ... less than 200$. Satisfies all the requirements of our seemingly elitist club.

HTH,
Patrick
Is that the textbook definition of a server? It needs to be in a closet? That can be arranged. It already does run 24/7/365 and is in my basement, so I hit those checkboxes. Moreover, running headless doesn't define a server, no matter how common it may be. There's no need to play a game of semantics here. We both know what equipment I'm running, and that equipment includes server-grade disks and HBA card...not that it technically matters anyway. Reliability of the hardware is not and never was a topic of this debate. I'm seeking answers on the software side only.

The problem here is your attitude about my use case, which you clearly don't like. But you don't need to like it, because it's not your equipment and you will never use it. So trash it all you want for all I care, I still won't be convinced to build a new "real" server. If I wasn't currently using this system as a workstation, it would fit your description of a server, minus the closet and being headless. Prior to the pandemic, it did just sit here unused and running 24/7. So lets stop pretending like my current use case has any bearing on this.
 

Big Ry

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I don't understand what you are implying. With FreeNAS, too, creating a redundant volume from disks and sharing that volume over a suitable protocol are two completely different things. That's how storage and networking works.

You can in Windows create a mirror of two disks so you have redundant storage. You can create a folder on that volume and share that.
In FreeNAS you create a redundant pool from two or more disk, mirror or RAIDZ1, then create a dataset on that pool, than share that.

Exactly the same steps with different underlying technology.
You are the one that keeps bringing up sharing. At no point did I ask how to share the disk. I'm only seeking information on configuring the arrays. I'm well aware that Windows can mirror drives and configure Raid arrays, as Ive mentioned multiple times. And Ive also stated that the Windows solutions are known to have issues, and that is why I shied away. I dont get why me stating this is just being glossed over again and again. I know how Storage Spaces works. If you want to make an argument that storage spaces is superior to what Im attempting in FreeNAS, fine, I'll take note of it. But continuing to rehash this is just beating a dead horse.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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Then install FreeNAS on that system and ditch Windows and things will work as intended. You insisted on running FreeNAS inside that Windows VM for $reasons. You are running a desktop version of Windows so you don't even have a full-featured hypervisor at hand. See the problem? FreeNAS is a full-featured server OS designed to run on bare metal. It can be virtualized but reliably only in *server* hypervisors. Windows Server, ESXi. Not VirtualBox, not VMware Workstation/Fusion, not Windows 10 Hyper-V. Apart from testing/development of course.

You do you. Enjoy.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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You are the one that keeps bringing up sharing. At no point did I ask how to share the disk. I'm only seeking information on configuring the arrays. I'm well aware that Windows can mirror drives and configure Raid arrays, as Ive mentioned multiple times. And Ive also stated that the Windows solutions are known to have issues, and that is why I shied away. I dont get why me stating this is just being glossed over again and again. I know how Storage Spaces works. If you want to make an argument that storage spaces is superior to what Im attempting in FreeNAS, fine, I'll take note of it. But continuing to rehash this is just beating a dead horse.
OK, one last try:

So let's imagine you installed FreeNAS on your Windows system successfully and everything works. FreeNAS drives a RAIDZ1 built from your 3 drives connected via that HBA. Good? Good.

How on earth do you intend to get at that storage space from Windows or from Plex without sharing?

Patrick
 

subhuman

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I've been corrected and original text has been removed from here

Patrick M. Hausen said:
You can in Windows create a mirror of two disks so you have redundant storage.
To clarify, Storage Spaces also can do striped with parity (basicly, RAID5). I said previously that I can't vouch for it only because I've never had to recover from a failed disk in such a pool (this computer I'm on now has 2 striped w/parity pools- one of 3x2TB disks and one of 3x3TB disks). Until I've successfully recovered from that, I'm unwilling to vouch for it.
 
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danb35

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Well, that escalated quickly. And just goes (once again) to show the value of the "ignore user" feature.
 

danb35

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A single-bit error in memory during a ZFS scrub has the potential to destroy all your data.
No, it doesn't. Please stop spreading this FUD.

Edit to explain: For a memory error to result in data corruption on a disk read (the so-called "scrub of death", though it wouldn't have to be during a scrub), a series of events need to happen:
  • ZFS reads good data from your pool, but due to bad RAM, thinks it's bad data. It believes this because the data it read, and the checksum it read, didn't match.
    • This means that either the data, the checksum, or both were read incorrectly
  • ZFS reads either redundant data (mirror) or parity (RAIDZn) to correct the "bad" data
    • As a result of the bad RAM, the data is read incorrectly
    • Also as a result of the bad RAM, the checksum is read incorrectly
    • By an astronomical coincidence, the bad data and the bad checksum match, so ZFS believes the bad data is good
  • Having now read what it incorrectly believes to be good data, ZFS now "corrects" the data and checksum it read in the first place, such that it's now corrupt.
Yes, in theory, this is possible, but the odds against it are enormous.
 
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Patrick M. Hausen

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HoneyBadger

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I'm going to go ahead and be late to the party here and go way back to post #1. Probably for the best. ;)

I don't need FreeNAS for anything besides managing the Plex storage drives. I still plan to run Plex in Windows, which means those drives need to be available in the Windows environment.

The quickest solution here would be to use the regular Windows disk management to set up a "striped with parity" volume on dynamic disks (RAID5) - this would make the data locally visible to your running Plex instance without the overhead of having everything loop through a virtual NIC into a hypervisor and then through the HBA and on. Performance will definitely be better doing this, and because it's the "legacy" software RAID rather than Storage Spaces, Microsoft is less likely to break it with every new Windows 10 feature/security update.

Regarding the HBA and Hyper-V; Windows 10 Pro doesn't officially support DDA (direct device assignment) so that's why it's being an absolute bear to enable. I believe I read something about it having been hacked into functionality but that was specifically for users passing in GPUs for virtual gaming instances, not an HBA for storage - and the interrupts might hook in differently.

As prickly as some of the other advice you've gotten is, it's not entirely off-base though. FreeNAS and other storage solutions, whether it's unRAID, DrivePool, or Storage Spaces, are intended to be run on a more stable software platform - whether that's a Windows Server distribution or a Linux/BSD on bare-metal, consumer operating systems do tend to be a little more fragile than the others.

A single-bit error in memory during a ZFS scrub has the potential to destroy all your data.

If you know a way to ensure an AES256 a Fletcher4 hash collision (which is what's necessary to make this true) please let me know - I have a Powerball I'd like to win.
 
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Patrick M. Hausen

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danb35

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If you know a way to ensure an AES256 hash collision
I think ZFS on FreeNAS uses skein as the default hash algorithm rather than SHA256, making the whole scenario ever-so-slightly less far-fetched. But still, the odds against it are enormous. The bottom line is that ECC should be used on any server, or anywhere else you care about your data--but there's nothing about ZFS that makes it any more important than anywhere else.
 

danb35

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I think the whole bunch of "us" is admiringly patient
I'm not quite as patient, which is probably why my ignore list gets a bit of a workout. Persistent, belligerent ignorance of the sort demonstrated by the OP is a sure way to get on it very quickly.
 

Big Ry

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I'm going to go ahead and be late to the party here and go way back to post #1. Probably for the best. ;)
Best advice I've heard all day.

The quickest solution here would be to use the regular Windows disk management to set up a "striped with parity" volume on dynamic disks (RAID5) - this would make the data locally visible to your running Plex instance without the overhead of having everything loop through a virtual NIC into a hypervisor and then through the HBA and on. Performance will definitely be better doing this, and because it's the "legacy" software RAID rather than Storage Spaces, Microsoft is less likely to break it with every new Windows 10 feature/security update.

Regarding the HBA and Hyper-V; Windows 10 Pro doesn't officially support DDA (direct device assignment) so that's why it's being an absolute bear to enable. I believe I read something about it having been hacked into functionality but that was specifically for users passing in GPUs for virtual gaming instances, not an HBA for storage - and the interrupts might hook in differently.

As prickly as some of the other advice you've gotten is, it's not entirely off-base though. FreeNAS and other storage solutions, whether it's unRAID, DrivePool, or Storage Spaces, are intended to be run on a more stable software platform - whether that's a Windows Server distribution or a Linux/BSD on bare-metal, consumer operating systems do tend to be a little more fragile than the others.



If you know a way to ensure an AES256 hash collision (which is what's necessary to make this true) please let me know - I have a Powerball I'd like to win.
This is the kind of response that I can actually use. Thank you.

You are another to confirm the lack of DDA support in Windows 10 Hyper-V. I've also heard of work-arounds to it as you say, but that is beyond the scope of what I'm willing to try in this case. So short of "upgrading" to Server and trying all this over again, it sounds like I need to decide on an alternative storage solution. And by the way, I also can mostly only find tutorials on passing graphics cards. Haven't found a single article specifically regarding passing HBAs in Hyper-V.
 

Big Ry

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I'm not quite as patient, which is probably why my ignore list gets a bit of a workout. Persistent, belligerent ignorance of the sort demonstrated by the OP is a sure way to get on it very quickly.
Yeah, I'm so ignorant for calling you out for being a dick. God, how could I have been so foolish!
 

HoneyBadger

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This is the kind of response that I can actually use. Thank you.

You are another to confirm the lack of DDA support in Windows 10 Hyper-V. I've also heard of work-arounds to it as you say, but that is beyond the scope of what I'm willing to try in this case. So short of "upgrading" to Server and trying all this over again, it sounds like I need to decide on an alternative storage solution. And by the way, I also can mostly only find tutorials on passing graphics cards. Haven't found a single article specifically regarding passing HBAs in Hyper-V.

You're welcome. I can only assume that any "workarounds" to force DDA functionality would make things more fragile, not less, so sticking with the in-Windows RAID is likely the path that introduces the fewest additional layers of middleware.

There's a few posts on r/hyperv about passing through HBAs via DDA, but GPU passthrough will fill your first ten pages of search results simply from it being far more common/made popular via a few YouTubers. The common thread still seems to be that Windows Server is in play though.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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Curious. When I suggested setting up redundancy in Windows he brushed it off. *sigh*
 
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