FreeNAS -- what do I need to know?

[79wjd]

@alpenwasser

 

I've been playing around with FreeNAS a bit over the past hour, and I can't really see needing to do anything else with it...I'm already able to access and stream from the system from at least two sources at the same time no problem -- so now it's just a question of setting up the drive array/s and/or accounts to restrict access. But I do think I want to create something like a RAID 5 array, but I've read that FreeNAS doesn't like to deal with a RAID card (i.e. it would rather have direct control over the cards), and I remember when setting up FreeNAS I was prompted with a basic selection menu determining how the drives would be set up -- so would I even need to setup the drives through a RAID 5 array, or would I just let FreeNAS do its thing?

 

And in regards to a RAID 5 array/FreeNAS's version of it -- what HDDs should I be looking at? I currently have two 1tb drives that I plan on throwing in and my intention is to buy a 4tb drive as well (and possibly another 4tb drive in the far away future) -- would that be a good choice, or should I be doing something else (in terms of drive capcity/number of drives)? As you inferred, I'd probably need a SATA/RAID controller in order to make a 4tb drive work with my current system -- are there any cheap controllers that would allow at least two 4tb drives? If not, then I was looking at the Gigabyte B85m Gaming 3 board since it's the cheapest board with (6) more than 4 SATA ports.

[Eniqmatic]

@alpenwasser

 

I've been playing around with FreeNAS a bit over the past hour, and I can't really see needing to do anything else with it...I'm already able to access and stream from the system from at least two sources at the same time no problem -- so now it's just a question of setting up the drive array/s and/or accounts to restrict access. But I do think I want to create something like a RAID 5 array, but I've read that FreeNAS doesn't like to deal with a RAID card (i.e. it would rather have direct control over the cards), and I remember when setting up FreeNAS I was prompted with a basic selection menu determining how the drives would be set up -- so would I even need to setup the drives through a RAID 5 array, or would I just let FreeNAS do its thing?

 

And in regards to a RAID 5 array/FreeNAS's version of it -- what HDDs should I be looking at? I currently have two 1tb drives that I plan on throwing in and my intention is to buy a 4tb drive as well (and possibly another 4tb drive in the far away future) -- would that be a good choice, or should I be doing something else (in terms of drive capcity/number of drives)? As you inferred, I'd probably need a SATA/RAID controller in order to make a 4tb drive work with my current system -- are there any cheap controllers that would allow at least two 4tb drives? If not, then I was looking at the Gigabyte B85m Gaming 3 board since it's the cheapest board with (6) more than 4 SATA ports.

 

Correct, FreeNAS wants to have direct access to all the drives, in order to be able to scrub and check the drives are all working correctly and not lying. Not doing this could cause an error when it try to correct any errors on scrubs or do any SMART testing. But your not using ECC RAM anyway or even the correct amount so if you are insisting on doing it this way then I would turn scrubbing off, it could do more harm than good.

 

You need to create a RAIDZ1 array to create your zpool, be aware that once you create a vdev you cannot add more discs to it, you can only replace the existing once with larger discs but not expand the total amount. If you wanted to add more physical discs you would simply need to create another vdev and add to the zpool.

[alpenwasser]

@alpenwasser

And in regards to a RAID 5 array/FreeNAS's version of it -- what HDDs should I be looking at? I currently have two 1tb drives that I plan on throwing in and my intention is to buy a 4tb drive as well (and possibly another 4tb drive in the far away future) -- would that be a good choice, or should I be doing something else (in terms of drive capcity/number of drives)? As you inferred, I'd probably need a SATA/RAID controller in order to make a 4tb drive work with my current system -- are there any cheap controllers that would allow at least two 4tb drives? If not, then I was looking at the Gigabyte B85m Gaming 3 board since it's the cheapest board with (6) more than 4 SATA ports.

Look at NAS drives. They have different behavior than desktop drives when it comes to

read failures. When a desktop drive encounters issues with reading data, it assumes that

it is the only drive which has that data and will keep trying for a very long time to

read it (as the data would otherwise be lost). This can lead to it being assumed dead

or damaged by a RAID system (afaik, both software and hardware, although I honestly

have not been able to find any absolutely 100% definitive answers on this regarding ZFS),

and thus the RAID system will drop the drive from the array even though the drive itself

is actually fine. The same can happen when you have powersaving drives and they go to sleep

(especially funny if they all go to sleep at the same time).

NAS and RAID-optimised drives have much shorter timeouts for trying to read data to avoid

this issue.

As for cheap SATA controllers, I don't really have any experience with them, so I'm neither

aware of possible issues nor can I say that I've seen it work.

Also, as has been said, disable scrubbing if you're not running ECC.

[79wjd]

Correct, FreeNAS wants to have direct access to all the drives, in order to be able to scrub and check the drives are all working correctly and not lying. Not doing this could cause an error when it try to correct any errors on scrubs or do any SMART testing. But your not using ECC RAM anyway or even the correct amount so if you are insisting on doing it this way then I would turn scrubbing off, it could do more harm than good.

 

You need to create a RAIDZ1 array to create your zpool, be aware that once you create a vdev you cannot add more discs to it, you can only replace the existing once with larger discs but not expand the total amount. If you wanted to add more physical discs you would simply need to create another vdev and add to the zpool.

Would I need a certain number of drives and/or of certain capacities to create a RAIDZ1 array? (Could I do 4-1-1 for now and just swap a 1 tb drive for a 4tb drive down the road?) Any thoughts on a RAID/Sata controller card that would enable me to use 4tb drives -- would that likely cause issues (and be more trouble than it's worth? Would a decent controller even be 'affordable' (it wouldn't make sense if it's more than $20-$30~ I think.

 

Look at NAS drives. They have different behavior than desktop drives when it comes to

read failures. When a desktop drive encounters issues with reading data, it assumes that

it is the only drive which has that data and will keep trying for a very long time to

read it (as the data would otherwise be lost). This can lead to it being assumed dead

or damaged by a RAID system (afaik, both software and hardware, although I honestly

have not been able to find any absolutely 100% definitive answers on this regarding ZFS),

and thus the RAID system will drop the drive from the array even though the drive itself

is actually fine. The same can happen when you have powersaving drives and they go to sleep

(especially funny if they all go to sleep at the same time).

NAS and RAID-optimised drives have much shorter timeouts for trying to read data to avoid

this issue.

As for cheap SATA controllers, I don't really have any experience with them, so I'm neither

aware of possible issues nor can I say that I've seen it work.

Also, as has been said, disable scrubbing if you're not running ECC.

As for a choice of drives....then a 4tb WD Red then is what I'd want (Reds are cheaper than the Seagate alternative, only this drive would be cheap -- by about $30 -- http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st4000dm000 )

[Eniqmatic]

Would I need a certain number of drives and/or of certain capacities to create a RAIDZ1 array? (Could I do 4-1-1 for now and just swap a 1 tb drive for a 4tb drive down the road?) Any thoughts on a RAID/Sata controller card that would enable me to use 4tb drives -- would that likely cause issues (and be more trouble than it's worth? Would a decent controller even be 'affordable' (it wouldn't make sense if it's more than $20-$30~ I think.

 

If I remember correctly, it's recommended to use RAIDZ1 with an odd number of drives I.E 3,5,7 etc. RAIDZ2 is best with an even number of drives. There is information out there about this. I think you will need to keep all discs in your vdev to the same size, however there is nothing stopping you from creating another vdev with a different capacity of drives and adding it to the zpool, thus expanding storage. If you take one thing away from this then don't use a RAID card with FreeNAS. You could look at LSI cards but not sure if this will enable you to use a 4TB drive with that board - I am unsure and wouldn't like to advise you for sure incase it didn't work.

 

WD Red drives are good and my preferred option over Seagate drives at the moment anyways regardless of the price, keep hearing stories of these failing very early which yes OK they are under warrenty but it is an inconvenience.

 

When you get the new drives, you should bed them in by stressing them immediately for around 24 hours, this will sort out any bad drives from the good immediately and give you the best chance for your drives to go the distance. See my FreeNAS thread for more information on that:

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/335679-the-mini-nas-project/

[79wjd]

@Eniqmatic

Well, I guess I'll probably go without redundancy (not direct redundancy anyway -- I have a 4tb my book and 2tb passport I can keep everything backed up onto. Although, I do still need to find a guaranteed way to use a 4tb drive (if it wasn't such a pain I could just sell the system and buy a new one and still end up pocketing a bit of money from the sale).

[Eniqmatic]

@Eniqmatic

Well, I guess I'll probably go without redundancy (not direct redundancy anyway -- I have a 4tb my book and 2tb passport I can keep everything backed up onto. Although, I do still need to find a guaranteed way to use a 4tb drive (if it wasn't such a pain I could just sell the system and buy a new one and still end up pocketing a bit of money from the sale).

Maybe not what you want to hear and I'm not sure how much they cost but have you looked into the HP micro servers? Specifically the N54L Proliant are seriously cheap if you can find anywhere that still sells them, or better yet the Gen 8 Proliant G1610T. In the UK the G1610T is on sale for £120 after cash back. Best thing is it supports 16GB of ECC RAM, dual NICS + an ILO port, will take much bigger drives and you can swap out the CPU for an i3 or Xeon with a little effort.

 

As I say, not sure of the cost where you are, but America usually has everything much cheaper than us!

[79wjd]

Maybe not what you want to hear and I'm not sure how much they cost but have you looked into the HP micro servers? Specifically the N54L Proliant are seriously cheap if you can find anywhere that still sells them, or better yet the Gen 8 Proliant G1610T. In the UK the G1610T is on sale for £120 after cash back. Best thing is it supports 16GB of ECC RAM, dual NICS + an ILO port, will take much bigger drives and you can swap out the CPU for an i3 or Xeon with a little effort.

As I say, not sure of the cost where you are, but America usually has everything much cheaper than us!

What would be the advantage of a system like that over something I'd build myself (which would definitely end up being cheaper)? Considering the use case I doubt I'd benefit much from anything above a celeron. (A quick search, albeit from my phone, shows the n54l at $400~)

[alpenwasser]

Would I need a certain number of drives and/or of certain capacities to create a RAIDZ1 array? (Could I do 4-1-1 for now and just swap a 1 tb drive for a 4tb drive down the road?) Any thoughts on a RAID/Sata controller card that would enable me to use 4tb drives -- would that likely cause issues (and be more trouble than it's worth? Would a decent controller even be 'affordable' (it wouldn't make sense if it's more than $20-$30~ I think.

 

 

If I remember correctly, it's recommended to use RAIDZ1 with an odd number of drives I.E 3,5,7 etc. RAIDZ2 is best with an even number of drives. There is information out there about this. I think you will need to keep all discs in your vdev to the same size, however there is nothing stopping you from creating another vdev with a different capacity of drives and adding it to the zpool, thus expanding storage. If you take one thing away from this then don't use a RAID card with FreeNAS. You could look at LSI cards but not sure if this will enable you to use a 4TB drive with that board - I am unsure and wouldn't like to advise you for sure incase it didn't work.

WD Reds are fine, yeah, I use them too.

As for vdev combos: You can basically do any weird and ridiculous combo you like, it's

just that you'll either take a performance and/or capacity hit. Using 4-1-1 in one vdev

will give you a total capacity of 2 TB (RAIDZ1), or 1 TB (three-way mirror). You could

also do one vdev with the 4 TB drive and a mirror with the two 1 TB drives, but I would

seriously advise against that since the 4 TB failing will cost you all your data.

And yes, for optimal performance I have seen it recommended to use 2^n data drives with

1,2 or 3 parity drives on top (so, 6 drives in RAIDZ2 for example). But this is really

just a performance thing and likely won't matter much in a normal consumer setup, so I

wouldn't worry about it tbh. I've also read that enabling compression makes this irrelevant,

though I'm not quite sure why, haven't been able to find much info on the subject.

In the end, I know the idea of "use your old components for a NAS" sounds cool, but you

will end up cutting corners, most likely. That could be perfectly acceptable, depending

on your needs, but it's important to be aware of that. Most important is to figure out

what you actually need though, we can't reallyl judge that from here.

Oh, and about the SATA card thing: My go-to choice is the LSI-9211-8i, but even that costs

~100 bucks on ebay. It can be flashed to IT mode (so it's just a dumb port card basically,

perfect for ZFS). But as you said, such an expensive card might not make sense for you.

[79wjd]

@alpenwasser

Yeah, I understand the issues with cutting corners, but for my use case I don't think it will matter too much considering it's just one-three devices streaming at any one time (at most -- more than likely it would only be one at a time). And the data being stored isn't super sensitive (it's jut basic media -- which will be backed up in another location regardless of the setup. So performance shouldn't really be an issue -- my only issue (I think) is setting up an affordable/cheap drive setup. So I can easily forgo redundancy -- I would just really like to be able to utilize a 4tb drive (plus the two 1tb drives).

[alpenwasser]

@alpenwasser

Yeah, I understand the issues with cutting corners, but for my use case I don't think it will matter too much considering it's just one-three devices streaming at any one time (at most -- more than likely it would only be one at a time). And the data being stored isn't super sensitive (it's jut basic media -- which will be backed up in another location regardless of the setup. So performance shouldn't really be an issue -- my only issue (I think) is setting up an affordable/cheap drive setup. So I can easily forgo redundancy -- I would just really like to be able to utilize a 4tb drive (plus the two 1tb drives).

Well if you have a backup anyway and you're aware of what you're doing then I shan't

stay in your way. It's all about making an informed decision in the end. As for the

4 TB drive, I doubt there are any silver bullets for that one, cost/performance-wise

You can give it a shot with a cheap SATA adapter of course though, most reasonably

recent ones should be able to recognise the drive fine. I don't really know the market

on that front well enough to give informed advice about that though.

[Jarsky]

Just to expand on the 4-1-1 thing, while you would have 2TB initially, you can swap out the 1's for 4's down the line, and rebuild the array - once all of the drives are 4's then you'd have 8TB's of useable space. raidz doesnt yet allow you to add additional drives, but you can add higher capacity drives and expand the volume.

 

You might get a lot more flexibility out of something like FlexRAID for your needs?

Or also unRAID which you would dedicate your largers disk to parity, and then you can mix and match all your other drive capacities and expand drives as needed.

[79wjd]

Just to expand on the 4-1-1 thing, while you would have 2TB initially, you can swap out the 1's for 4's down the line, and rebuild the array - once all of the drives are 4's then you'd have 8TB's of useable space. raidz doesnt yet allow you to add additional drives, but you can add higher capacity drives and expand the volume.

 

You might get a lot more flexibility out of something like FlexRAID for your needs?

Or also unRAID which you would dedicate your largers disk to parity, and then you can mix and match all your other drive capacities and expand drives as needed.

Well, I currently need about 5tb of usable storage, and I'd rather not buy two 4tb drives atm.

@alpenwasser fair enough, thanks

[79wjd]

@alpenwasser @Eniqmatic 

I'm curious, what would the performance difference be like between a Celeron/Pentium/i3, and 4/8/16gb of ram (assuming 6tb of total storage with no redundancy and one to three local clients streaming at any given time)? In the cursory testing I did last night I was streaming to two devices and didn't seem to have any issues. 

 

Also, do you think $400 (on Craigslist) is doable for my current system (any thoughts on the max I can get)? I'm hoping it will appeal to some Alienware fans.... 

• Q6700 
• EVGA nforce 680i SLI (one of the better/best oc'g boards)
• Stock-ish cooler (not stock, but nothing that's going to handle any overclocking) 
• 4gb DDR2 RAM (4x1gb sticks)
• Newton Power 750w psu (capable of delivery 700w across four 12v rails) 
• An Alienware Area-51 Case (Old style -- http://www.desktopreview.com/assets/1415.jpg) 
• 8800GTS
• 750gb HDD
• dual ODDs including Blu-ray reader/writer
• Win XP

[Eniqmatic]

Streaming doesn't really require any CPU, transcoding however does. Were you transcoding or streaming? 

 

I wouldn't be able to comment on costs/prices over your side of the pond unfortunately.

[79wjd]

Streaming doesn't really require any CPU, transcoding however does. Were you transcoding or streaming? 

 

I wouldn't be able to comment on costs/prices over your side of the pond unfortunately.

I'll be watching MP4/etc... Files that are located on the NAS through vlc... So, no transcoding.

[Eniqmatic]

So it's not going to be CPU intensive, when you would need transcoding is for a device that doesn't support the file format natively, I.E Smart TV's.

[linuxfan66]

Everything about new I read about free as makes it looks like a poorly designed, memory inefficient, unreliable, or unsuitable for home use...

[79wjd]

So it's not going to be CPU intensive, when you would need transcoding is for a device that doesn't support the file format natively, I.E Smart TV's.

Yeah, no, it should -- for the lost part -- just be computers accessing and streaming media....although an Apple TV might be used as well.

[alpenwasser]

- snip -

As Eniqmatic said, as long as you just stream and don't do transcoding, most CPUs should be

fine. As for price, I'm afraid I'd just be guessing blind on that one, so I won't mislead you

with unfounded assumptions. 

[79wjd]

As Eniqmatic said, as long as you just stream and don't do transcoding, most CPUs should befine. As for price, I'm afraid I'd just be guessing blind on that one, so I won't mislead youwith unfounded assumptions.

Would a celeron be able to handle transcoding at all? (Would the Apple TV stream or transcode?) -- would I be able to watch stuff on an Apple TV with a celeron? Would a g3258/other pentium be noticeably better? A celeron g1820 would be $45, a pentium G3240 would be $53, and a g3258 would be $60~.

What impact would memory have? -- since in the quick test I ran the other day two devices streaming at 1080p (a 2gb movie) didn't seem to have any issues.

[Jarsky]

Transcoding doesn't take too much memory, the memory requirement is mostly for ZFS.

As for CPU,  those are all going to be much the same as they're all 2 threads - but for the small price difference, may as well get the G3258.

 

Transcoding up to 1080p should be perfectly fine with any of those CPU's with something like Plex - though if you run the mediascanner library update while playing something HD at the same time, then you will probably get some stutter. The mediascanner on Plex can be pretty aggresive. I have a 24thread server, and it can launch a handful of instances that use upwards of 30-40% for short bursts.

[alpenwasser]

Would a celeron be able to handle transcoding at all? (Would the Apple TV stream or transcode?) -- would I be able to watch stuff on an Apple TV with a celeron? Would a g3258/other pentium be noticeably better? A celeron g1820 would be $45, a pentium G3240 would be $53, and a g3258 would be $60~.

What impact would memory have? -- since in the quick test I ran the other day two devices streaming at 1080p (a 2gb movie) didn't seem to have any issues.

 

Since I've never used anything related to transcoding but don't want to be impolite and

just stop answering I shall refer you to Jarsky's answer.

 

Transcoding doesn't take too much memory, the memory requirement is mostly for ZFS.

As for CPU,  those are all going to be much the same as they're all 2 threads - but for the small price difference, may as well get the G3258.

 

Transcoding up to 1080p should be perfectly fine with any of those CPU's with something like Plex - though if you run the mediascanner library update while playing something HD at the same time, then you will probably get some stutter. The mediascanner on Plex can be pretty aggresive. I have a 24thread server, and it can launch a handful of instances that use upwards of 30-40% for short bursts.

[Eniqmatic]

Good advice here, the celeron from my tests can handle 1 maybe 2 transcoding streams at 1080p.

[Eniqmatic]

Everything about new I read about free as makes it looks like a poorly designed, memory inefficient, unreliable, or unsuitable for home use...

You evidently have no idea about it at all to make unjustified claims such as this..