I used to run FreeNAS years ago, I think it was FreeNAS5 when I started but I do remember that at FreeNAS7 there was no direct upgrade path and I changed over to OpenNAS. Not as good but did the job.
Over the years the NAS server was patched, tinkered with, and in the in was being held together with bubble gum, bailing wire, and good intentions duct taped into place. It died about the time the kids were moving out so I was in no hurry to rebuild it. Now I am getting around to rebuilding it but I am playing, testing, and checking everything to see how well it will work.
First thing I did was pull all the old equipment out of the garage and and strip it down. Mite as well take the best pieces to make the new NAS. There were several desktop systems so I had a choice of parts. I chose the motherboard because it has 6 SATA ports in it. The down side is it has a realtek network controller onboard which has already given me issues with the first set of test copies.
This is a list of the hardware I have onhand as well as what I bought for the project.
The initial test build
FM2-A75MA-E35 msi motherboard
AMD A8-5600k CPU 3.60GhZ (Quad Core)
8gig ram (2x 4g DDR3 sticks)
1x 750g Western Digital Drive (OS Drive)
1x 3tb Hitachi drive
1x 2Tb Seagate Drive
1x 1Tb Hitachi Drive
400w power supply
Other hardware I have laying around
1x 4g brocade switch
4x 4g san cards
5x 16Gb sandisk SSD Drives
1 to 5 SATA port multiplier
1 SD/MMC to SATA adapter (Takes 2 SD cards and puts them in a RAID0 config then makes them look like a SATA Drive to the OS)
1x 1.5Tb Seagate Drive (bad blocks)
1x 300G Seagate Drive
1x 750G Hitachi Drive
Bought for the project
2x 3 disk hot swap drive bays (takes 2 drive pays per)
New case with 4 external bays
I have lots of time to build, play with, and do testing of the setup.
I am aware that how you use the space is important to the overall layout so the primary uses are
1) Media storage (Movies, TV-Shows, Music, etc. For streaming Currently 1.5Tb)
2) Backup of my video and audio editing work (Currently over 500G)
3) Shared home directory space (Currently over 300G. I need to clean that out lol)
4) Expansion drive space for my PaaS cloud server
5) Expansion disk space for my existing OwnCloud deployment.
First test run was impressive in the abilities, setup, and speed, but the 1.5Tb drive had block relocation in the SMART report and the whole thing fell apart on reboot as it panicked and would not mount the pool.
I am always open to suggestions and advice on how you would do it. Im still reading through the docs but am leaning towards playing with using the SSD drives as L2ARC and ZIL based on the drive usage. ZIL for the backup of my video and audio work as there is a lot of changing and writing then maybe L2ARC for the Media storage but that may not be a good idea as it is not a read ahead cache.
Over the years the NAS server was patched, tinkered with, and in the in was being held together with bubble gum, bailing wire, and good intentions duct taped into place. It died about the time the kids were moving out so I was in no hurry to rebuild it. Now I am getting around to rebuilding it but I am playing, testing, and checking everything to see how well it will work.
First thing I did was pull all the old equipment out of the garage and and strip it down. Mite as well take the best pieces to make the new NAS. There were several desktop systems so I had a choice of parts. I chose the motherboard because it has 6 SATA ports in it. The down side is it has a realtek network controller onboard which has already given me issues with the first set of test copies.
This is a list of the hardware I have onhand as well as what I bought for the project.
The initial test build
FM2-A75MA-E35 msi motherboard
AMD A8-5600k CPU 3.60GhZ (Quad Core)
8gig ram (2x 4g DDR3 sticks)
1x 750g Western Digital Drive (OS Drive)
1x 3tb Hitachi drive
1x 2Tb Seagate Drive
1x 1Tb Hitachi Drive
400w power supply
Other hardware I have laying around
1x 4g brocade switch
4x 4g san cards
5x 16Gb sandisk SSD Drives
1 to 5 SATA port multiplier
1 SD/MMC to SATA adapter (Takes 2 SD cards and puts them in a RAID0 config then makes them look like a SATA Drive to the OS)
1x 1.5Tb Seagate Drive (bad blocks)
1x 300G Seagate Drive
1x 750G Hitachi Drive
Bought for the project
2x 3 disk hot swap drive bays (takes 2 drive pays per)
New case with 4 external bays
I have lots of time to build, play with, and do testing of the setup.
I am aware that how you use the space is important to the overall layout so the primary uses are
1) Media storage (Movies, TV-Shows, Music, etc. For streaming Currently 1.5Tb)
2) Backup of my video and audio editing work (Currently over 500G)
3) Shared home directory space (Currently over 300G. I need to clean that out lol)
4) Expansion drive space for my PaaS cloud server
5) Expansion disk space for my existing OwnCloud deployment.
First test run was impressive in the abilities, setup, and speed, but the 1.5Tb drive had block relocation in the SMART report and the whole thing fell apart on reboot as it panicked and would not mount the pool.
I am always open to suggestions and advice on how you would do it. Im still reading through the docs but am leaning towards playing with using the SSD drives as L2ARC and ZIL based on the drive usage. ZIL for the backup of my video and audio work as there is a lot of changing and writing then maybe L2ARC for the Media storage but that may not be a good idea as it is not a read ahead cache.
