Suggestions for PC/Mac mixed CIFS/AFS drives, volumes, shares setup.

[Reciprocity75]

Hi everybody,

I am in the planning stages of my new freenas server for my home/home business environment. My needs are more for uptime and reliability than for pure transfer speed. I would appreciate some thoughts on the following setup.

On the home network I have 1 PC desktop, 1 PC laptop and 1 Mac laptop. The desktop is my photo editing machine for a photography side business. It has a few hard drives and the storage is around 4TB total, with a 240GB OS drive and 2, 2TB media storage drives. Actual data sits around 1.5TB, so quite a bit of headroom. The PC laptop is a simple, 120GB ssd drive. The Mac laptop is the wife’s and has a 500gb main drive. I plan to have 2, 1TB drives for OS backups, 1 for the PC’s and 1 for time machine. Each drive would be dedicated to OS backups and setup as a single ZFS drive. These would not be backed up to another location (don’t crucify me yet, I have a plan).

The desktop media drives would be backed up to a 3x2TB or 3x3TB raidz1 with an off-site backup (a NAS disk that is stored at work, which would come home a few times a month for backup). Also on the raidz1 would be a backup of all the non-software documents, music, lightroom catalog, etc. Basically the user files would be included in the OS backup as well as a second backup to the raidz1 volume. I would also place any non-downloadable installers, some movies, some music, etc for streaming to the living room. I mostly stream music and as I don’t have a huge collection, this doesn’t represent much in the way of storage space.

Finally, I would add a zfs mirror of 2x2TB disks. This would be an AFS share for my wife’s media creation. She works on the side as well, creating training videos, etc. I would start with 2TB and see how fast she fills that up. This would be backed up to an off-site disk. On this mirror would also be a second copy of all her documents and non-software documents, similar to the two PC’s. The documents, music, etc would again be a small portion of the total content on this drive.

So, in summary this is what I am considering

Core i3 or E3 CPU, 16GB ram

1x1TB ZFS – PC OS drive backups, 1 volume, 2 datasets (CIFS) for each PC
1x1TB ZFS – Apple OS Time Machine backup, 1 volume, 1 dataset (AFS) for wife’s Mac
3x2TB or 3x3TB ZFS RaidZ1 – PC media backup, software installers, user document backup (2nd copy), 1 volume, several datasets (CIFS) as needed – backed up to offsite disk
2x2TB ZFS mirror – Mac media storage, user document backup (2nd copy), 1 volume, several datasets (AFS) as needed – backed up to offsite disk

Any and all help/comments/crucifixions welcomed.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[JaimieV]

Not clear as to why you'd separate the Mac/Windows destinations like that. Why not consolidate? I do, no issues.
1x2Tb ZFS - three datasets with quotas set, PC/Mac backups (I'm with you on not bothering to make them redundant, btw)
4x2Tb (or 4x3Tb) RAIDZ1 - PC/Mac media storage - backed up to offsite

Simpler, lower power, and easier to share the space around if you ever need to.

You don't actually need datasets for most things, btw. Setting quotas is about all that they'd be useful in for your use, I'd have thought. Just use directories.

 

[Reciprocity75]

JamieV,

"Not clear as to why you'd separate the Mac/Windows destinations like that." - Because apparently I cannot read. I was under the impression that sharing with CIFS and AFP for the same volume was incorrect, but I also translated that to mean the entire volume, regardless of datasets. Now that I have re-read the section on shares, it is obvious that they meant sharing 1 dataset as CIFS AND AFP, not sharing multiple datasets as CIFS or AFP from the same volume. Thank you for helping me to clear this up. Still very new to freenas and they way it works.

Now that I understand this a little bit better, I think your setup will be just the ticket, but I think I will stick with a 3x3tb raidz1 instead of the 4 disks. 6TB should be more than enough space for many years to come.

Thanks again.

 

[JaimieV]

Thumbs up! Even if you share the same share (not dataset, could just be a folder) with two different protocols, there's only a small window of screwup possible. None, if only one of the protocols will be read/write.

Here's a useful trick: if you share the same folder both AFP and CIFS, and want to hide all the rubbish extra files that Macs put on shares from the Windows boxes, add this to the CIFS share's Advanced Mode, Auxiliary Parameters section:

Code:

veto files = /Temporary Items/.DS_Store/.AppleDB/.TemporaryItems/.AppleDouble/.bin/.AppleDesktop/Network Trash Folder/.Spotlight/.Trashes/.fseventd/
delete veto files = yes
hide dot files = yes