vdevs and shares and pools Oh My

[mvt]

I apologize that this question could be answered by sufficient delving into the docs, but not understanding the basics makes the docs very hard to read.

Among physical devices, their mounting under the OS, vdevs, shares, pools, and probably more... I'm lost.

All the names refer to the same set of storage in some fashion, and it isn't at all clear how they relate. Certain users can be given access to some of these, or parts of these. And some user owns them.

I'm asked to give names to some things... such as volumes... and I don't know which name(s) will finally be used when I access the NAS from my local network.

A short description of how these inter-relate would be very helpful to let me get started reading the documentation. A diagram (if possible) would also help.

Thanks.

My goal and equipment:
running latest version of FreeNAS
(4) 1TB hard drives that I want as a ZRAID-1 to have 1 drive fail-safe
I think that will give me approx 3TB of storage space
not at all concerned about speed of read or write
SuperMicro X7SPA-HF 4GB RAM

 

[danb35]

Well, you'll need to double your RAM to be safe with FreeNAS. That said...

The terms volume, pool, and zpool are interchangeable. ZFS uses the term pool or zpool, while FreeNAS calls it a Volume. Pools have names, but those names aren't exposed over the network. A pool consists of one or more vdevs.

Vdevs don't have names. They're the building blocks of pools, and they're where your redundancy lies. FreeNAS mostly hides this layer of things from you, so it isn't something you need to worry a great deal about in setting up your system. Vdevs are composed of one or more disks (or disk-like devices). Disks also don't have names.

Shares do have names, and those names are exposed over the network. You should choose share names that are meaningful to you and/or your users. A share is ideally a dataset, which acts in many ways like a separate volume. Datasets and directories can have a variety of permissions set, but that topic gets a bit more complicated.

I don't think this answers all your questions, but it should get you started. If you have more specific questions, please clarify. Also, please make sure you review @cyberjock's powerpoint, which is one of the top sticky threads in this forum--it should help you get started.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I hope you'll be less lost with this diagram ;)

Danb35 has already said everything else and I agree with him :)