New to FreeNAS and having 2 issues with initial setup

Samuel Tai

Never underestimate your own stupidity
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OpenZFS.org is just a wiki page, and the link to the Windows version takes you to a website with nothing on it except a single fuzzy photo. Is this like a prank or something?

View attachment 39673

No, the buttons below the graphic take you to @Yorick's Github link.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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OpenZFS on Windows is over yonder. Note it's 0.23 and installation requires you to turn on the option to load unsigned drivers. I view this as a bit experimental, but maybe @Patrick M. Hausen has experience with running it.
Unfortunately not, but I have run it on Mac OS and of course on Linux and FreeBSD.

If I finally got the OP right he's got this three expensive disk drives that he wants to share and a single consumer of that storage space, namely the separate Plex server. So why not share the drives from Windows? Can Windows share a block device as iSCSI? Then you could do the ZFS part on the other end. Anything would be more lean and probably more stable than running an entire storage server OS in a VM on a desktop machine just to share these 3 drives to a single client.

That's my line of thinking here. Heck, hook them up to that Plex system ...
 

Big Ry

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No, the buttons below the graphic take you to @Yorick's Github link.
So youre suggesting I blindly install some software without, at a minimum, knowing anything about its features. Seems to me like I just getting chewed out for trying to find info on installing FreeNAS?
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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The buttons lead to the documentation Wiki or the Github repo ... hover with your mouse over them and you will see.

It's a really bad web design practice called "mystery meat navigation" by Vincent Flanders, but it's solid software.
 

Samuel Tai

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I'm not suggesting anything. The site is very low key.
 

Big Ry

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Unfortunately not, but I have run it on Mac OS and of course on Linux and FreeBSD.

If I finally got the OP right he's got this three expensive disk drives that he wants to share and a single consumer of that storage space, namely the separate Plex server. So why not share the drives from Windows? Can Windows share a block device as iSCSI? Then you could do the ZFS part on the other end. Anything would be more lean and probably more stable than running an entire storage server OS in a VM on a desktop machine just to share these 3 drives to a single client.

That's my line of thinking here. Heck, hook them up to that Plex system ...
I have more drives than that actually. BUt that;s kind of besides the point. I have maxed out the board's sata ports, hence the HBA. I could theoretically switch some around to get these WD Golds on the board, but would that even work in FreeNAS anyway? It certainly would limit my future expansion, for what thats worth.


I'm not sure I follow the second part of your post. What do you mean by share from Windows?
 

Yorick

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So youre suggesting I blindly install some software without, at a minimum, knowing anything about its features.

See, there is a German saying: "Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus". You are miffed at the response you are getting, and, brother, you come across as quite prickly.

My suggestion is to assume the best intentions of everyone here and respond accordingly, and you'll have a more pleasant and fruitful conversation.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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Windows can act as a file server commonly referred to as a NAS ... right-click on a folder, share ...
 

Big Ry

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The buttons lead to the documentation Wiki or the Github repo ... hover with your mouse over them and you will see.

It's a really bad web design practice called "mystery meat navigation" by Vincent Flanders, but it's solid software.
Oh, now I see that I need to click the link on Github. I don't use Github very often. Still, it's a bit unsettling just having this, not to mention what Yorick said about unsigned drivers. Anything that's in the beta stage or is otherwise fairly experimental is probably best avoided by a n00b such as myself.
 

Big Ry

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See, there is a German saying: "Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus". You are miffed at the response you are getting, and, brother, you come across as quite prickly.

My suggestion is to assume the best intentions of everyone here and respond accordingly, and you'll have a more pleasant and fruitful conversation.
I responded accordingly to prior ignorance I received. You can defend your friends all you want, doesn't mean they're not dicks. You have been nice and helpful, and I believe I've reciprocated. But I don't take kindly to arrogance, in life or online. Hence my tone with Samuel Tai. There's just no need for it.
 

Yorick

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or is otherwise fairly experimental is probably best avoided by a n00b such as myself.

And that is why folk are suggesting you keep it simple, and not virtualize. Virtualizing has additional pitfalls, it's definitely not "new to all this, and what is a subnet anyway, and what again does ZFS do?" territory.
 

Big Ry

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And that is why folk are suggesting you keep it simple, and not virtualize. Virtualizing has additional pitfalls, it's definitely not "new to all this, and what is a subnet anyway, and what again does ZFS do?" territory.
And that's perfectly fine. I'm not committed to FreeNAS. I'm only trying it out to see if I can get it to work. The way I see it, it can end one of these ways:

1. I get everything setup easily. (clearly, out the window)
2. I get things setup, but it's rather difficult.
3. I can get it configured, but I decide it's not worth the effort involved in doing so.
4. It flat-out won't work.

This can end in any one of those 4 scenarios, and that's OK with me. I just need to know which option is correct, so I can move on with the install or move on to something else. That's my whole entire goal here.

Edit: And I've noted your and other's feedback on this. That's why I'm leaning toward #3 or #4 now. It sounds to me like there may have been some confusion related to DDA on Windows 10 and Windows Server, which is ultimately the deciding factor.
 

Yorick

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Patrick M. Hausen

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You said the data wasn't all that important and you did backups, anyway. Seriously, I don't know from the top of my head how that dialog is named today in Windows 10 but I know for sure that Windows can share files via CIFS. And the redundancy could be achived by setting up a mirror. Again, in Windows, with that disk manager thingy you get when right-clicking "This Computer" --> "Manage", I assume from @subhuman's post.
Just run your desktop OS and share the storage space instead of forcing (I am repeating myself) a complete server OS on your desktop somehow ...
 

subhuman

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Big Ry said:
. So telling someone to trash their equipment and
I don't recall saying that. Please quote where I said to trash your equipment. Keep using it for whatever it's already doing.
Calm down. Take a breath and relax a bit. I get the impression you're getting entirely too worked up over this.
Yeah, but what about redundancy? I actually don't even see "Share" as an option.
For the first, read up on Storage Spaces. As I said before, it does mirroring fine. It also has the option to make striped pools, but I haven't used that much so I can't vouch for it.
For the second, right click on a folder or drive, select properties, and there should be a sharing tab. If there isn't, you have a permissions issue or the Server service has been manually stopped.
 

Big Ry

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You said the data wasn't all that important and you did backups, anyway. Seriously, I don't know from the top of my head how that dialog is named today in Windows 10 but I know for sure that Windows can share files via CIFS. And the redundancy could be achived by setting up a mirror. Again, in Windows, with that disk manager thingy you get when right-clicking "This Computer" --> "Manage", I assume from @subhuman's post.
Just run your desktop OS and share the storage space instead of forcing (I am repeating myself) a complete server OS on your desktop somehow ...
I never said I have backups, not of this data at least. I have cloud backups of my important documents on my SSD, but has nothing to do with this data at all. You're right that I don't see this Plex data as all that important, certainly compared to data stored on a corporate server. But of course I want to try to avoid data loss if possible. A good balance of security & storage capacity is my goal here, hence the Raid Z.

As mentioned above in response to Yorick, I don't follow what youre saying about sharing in Windows. Perhaps I'm just ignorant to the topic, but it was my understanding that the only option for redundant arrays within Windows is through Storage Spaces. I acknowledge that I can effectively do the same thing in Windows with a Raid 5 array. The reason I've avoided Windows-managed solutions is due to feedback Ive received about the reliability of Storage Spaces and the difficulty in restoring data after a loss. Especially considering Build 2004, which has been reported to break Storage Space pools.

Edit: Storage Spaces is still on the back burner for me, as is Drivepool, Drivepool+snapraid, Drive Bender, possibly still Unraid if PCIe passthrough isn't also an issue with that. FreeNAS isn't the only solution I've considered; I just determined it to be the best option if I can get it running.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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First redundandancy - @subhuman already hinted you at "Storage Spaces". Then when you have a redundant volume, right-click ... sharing.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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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
 
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