lecrucious
Cadet
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2012
- Messages
- 4
Wasn't sure if this was the best place to post but since I'm new to FreeNas, thought it was a good try.
So here's what I am trying to accomplish:
I want to create a NAS, running FreeNas. This guy is gonna be my big honking storage device for everything. AFP, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, Snapshots, Replication, etc. I want to make it virtual, ESXi. The existing host has plenty RAM and a good number of empty bays for later expansion.
What I can't decide is Hardware RAID with Raw Device Mapping (RDM). Or do I go straight RDM per disk and use software RAID.
I have a good hardware RAID controller so this is not a concern. I am also aware that HW vs SW RAID can be a bit of a touchy subject. Let me start by saying my question is not which is better in general. Depending on the application I have used both and am comfortable with either. My biggest concern is, from a ZFS perspective, which will give me the best long term stability and flexibility? This wouldn't even be a question if the underlying filesystem was something else like NTFS.
In the past I have usually used HW RAID and just let the controller handle the disks. But reading through the FreeNas docs I saw a phrase that said "ZFS prefers direct, exclusive access to the disks, with nothing in between that interferes." The document essentially dedicates a paragraph to say, "Let ZFS do it's thing and don't try to help."
Since I am new to ZFS I didn't want to take any chances and am hoping to get it right the first time. I understand using RDM has the added complexity of properly identifying failed disks but with proper labeling and documentation...not really worried.
So to re-cap. I'm new to ZFS. Is it really the uber-filesystem that I should let it have the disk directly and let it handle data integrity/fault tolerance? Or do I use "old trusted RAID controller" who, even with some horror stories, is mostly reliable?
So here's what I am trying to accomplish:
I want to create a NAS, running FreeNas. This guy is gonna be my big honking storage device for everything. AFP, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, Snapshots, Replication, etc. I want to make it virtual, ESXi. The existing host has plenty RAM and a good number of empty bays for later expansion.
What I can't decide is Hardware RAID with Raw Device Mapping (RDM). Or do I go straight RDM per disk and use software RAID.
I have a good hardware RAID controller so this is not a concern. I am also aware that HW vs SW RAID can be a bit of a touchy subject. Let me start by saying my question is not which is better in general. Depending on the application I have used both and am comfortable with either. My biggest concern is, from a ZFS perspective, which will give me the best long term stability and flexibility? This wouldn't even be a question if the underlying filesystem was something else like NTFS.
In the past I have usually used HW RAID and just let the controller handle the disks. But reading through the FreeNas docs I saw a phrase that said "ZFS prefers direct, exclusive access to the disks, with nothing in between that interferes." The document essentially dedicates a paragraph to say, "Let ZFS do it's thing and don't try to help."
Since I am new to ZFS I didn't want to take any chances and am hoping to get it right the first time. I understand using RDM has the added complexity of properly identifying failed disks but with proper labeling and documentation...not really worried.
So to re-cap. I'm new to ZFS. Is it really the uber-filesystem that I should let it have the disk directly and let it handle data integrity/fault tolerance? Or do I use "old trusted RAID controller" who, even with some horror stories, is mostly reliable?