Very specific question - I did do a few searches!

[OhhWell]

I currently have a TS140 running SAMBA on Linux and sharing files from an older DROBO attached by USB 2.0. Since the DROBO only guards against drive failure and not human error, I added another drobo and setup regular snapshots to it every night. This has worked exceptionally well and our needs are not large. We store video records of public meetings which we are required by law to keep for 3 years. We also have hard copies on DVD so not life or death but it is important to me to have trust in the data storage.

OK, so we are now in the age of HD and these files are getting bigger. We also encode live right to the storage and performance is starting to be a concern. I am going to take a drive tray out of an old Dell we have laying around and load the 4 HDDs from one DROBO into the TS140 and load FreeNAS on to it. I only get about 28MBps from the DROBO currently and my testing at home with a similar setup (consumer hardware) rips along and can saturate the Gigabit connection with no issues)

TL;DR: So, finally to my question. I want to have an off site backup. We have a location many miles away with a server room that is hardened. I can ask our IT department for a VM in that room but not a dedicated machine. I want to take the second DROBO and have it passed through to a VM running FreeNAS (for the simplicity of snapshot replication). So, with a bit of testing using VMs yesterday I know that it will "work" but my question is whether I will face any possible corruption or loss on that remote DROBO on a VM? I hear a lot about how FreeNAS does not like external raid controllers etc. My thinking is that the DROBO handles all of it's own internal redundancy and error checking and I will not need to worry about ZFS since it is a single drive right?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Stux]

I currently have a TS140 running SAMBA on Linux and sharing files from an older DROBO attached by USB 2.0. Since the DROBO only guards against drive failure and not human error, I added another drobo and setup regular snapshots to it every night. This has worked exceptionally well and our needs are not large. We store video records of public meetings which we are required by law to keep for 3 years. We also have hard copies on DVD so not life or death but it is important to me to have trust in the data storage.

OK, so we are now in the age of HD and these files are getting bigger. We also encode live right to the storage and performance is starting to be a concern. I am going to take a drive tray out of an old Dell we have laying around and load the 4 HDDs from one DROBO into the TS140 and load FreeNAS on to it. I only get about 28MBps from the DROBO currently and my testing at home with a similar setup (consumer hardware) rips along and can saturate the Gigabit connection with no issues)

Ok. Good.

TL;DR: So, finally to my question. I want to have an off site backup. We have a location many miles away with a server room that is hardened. I can ask our IT department for a VM in that room but not a dedicated machine. I want to take the second DROBO and have it passed through to a VM running FreeNAS (for the simplicity of snapshot replication).

Few things, firstly, FreeNAS is a very heavy process to run in a VM *just* as a replication target. You could just use FreeBSD instead.

Secondly, having the primary storage of a FreeNAS instance being a USB drive is not a good idea

Thirdly, having that USB drive actually being a RAID controller is even worse.

Fourthly, a Drobo is even worse, as Drobos diddle with the file system.

So, with a bit of testing using VMs yesterday I know that it will "work" but my question is whether I will face any possible corruption or loss on that remote DROBO on a VM?

Highly likely.

I hear a lot about how FreeNAS does not like external raid controllers etc. My thinking is that the DROBO handles all of it's own internal redundancy and error checking and I will not need to worry about ZFS since it is a single drive right?

Thanks in advance!

It's a magic raid controller. It's even worse.

 

[OhhWell]

Few things, firstly, FreeNAS is a very heavy process to run in a VM *just* as a replication target. You could just use FreeBSD instead.

Good point. This doesn't concern me much as I would have the replication run after business hours and luckily 99% of our IT utilization is 9-5. The thing is, I don't have to spend from my pitiful budget if it is a VM. Otherwise I would get some cheap hardware for in there.

OK, to the second point of free BSD, I am trying to make things easier on myself and having a browser based GUI is a massive benefit to me. This is not my primary job function.



Secondly, having the primary storage of a FreeNAS instance being a USB drive is not a good idea

Thank you. This is good info. I had read that a system file is located on the 1st storage and that any plugins are stored there as well. I didn't know it was deeper than that. Understanding that this is not mission critical data, would I mitigate my issues by asking for a small virtual drive to make the first storage for the FreeNAS VM?

Thirdly, having that USB drive actually being a RAID controller is even worse.

Yes, another good point. So far over the past 4 years or so, once I have set them up, they seem to interact with the OS exactly like a USB drive. I have no idea what modified raid format they use and they sure aren't forthcoming with any info on that. While slow, they have been exceptionally reliable and user friendly so far.

Fourthly, a Drobo is even worse, as Drobos diddle with the file system.

Hahaha, yeah. See above for my ignorance as to what they do internally.



Highly likely.

Really, because of the fragility of the first storage device on a FreeNAS setup or because the Drobo will fight with FreeNAS even though it is (supposedly) just presenting itself to the computer as a standard USB drive?

As I read what I hammered out on this damn cell phone it may sound as if I am argumentative to support a flawed plan just because I came up with it. This is not true. I knew that what I wanted to do was very far from optimal or even the vision of FreeNAS in general.

Is it mostly the oddness of the Drobo that is generating the "most likely" prediction or the running it in a VM? Really the only ECC capable hardware that I have available to my dept. this fiscal year is the ts140.





It's a magic raid controller. It's even worse.

LOL that is not far from their marketing material.

 

[toadman]

Really, because of the fragility of the first storage device on a FreeNAS setup or because the Drobo will fight with FreeNAS even though it is (supposedly) just presenting itself to the computer as a standard USB drive?

It's because FreeNAS thinks it has control of the bits on the drive, but it really doesn't, Drobo does. Might work, might not. Hence the warning.

 

[Stux]

Drobos don't present as standard USB drives... they just appear too.

This is the reason why drobo warns not to use OS software to resize drobo partitions.

 

[Stux]

The trick to doing what you want to do is to expose the internal disks in the drobo to the vm directly, possibly in a simple passive enclosure

 

[OhhWell]

Thank you guys. In light of what you have told me I will view this as an experiment and put in for whatever the current equivalent of a ts140 is for next fiscal year.

I'll run the messed up VM thing just for the off-site backup until then and make a virtual drive the 1st mounted storage. Should be interesting...