[Build-Log] FreeNAS "Boss-NAS" by FloRolf [Update 14th January 2019]

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Do you mean backing up data from your computer(s) to your NAS?

Do you mean backing up the server pool data to another pool?

Do you mean backing up the server pool data to a separate server?

 

There's ways to automate all three but the configurations vary. Unless FloRolf wants to set this up too then it's not going to get discussed any time soon. I can help you with that separately though. I've used the first 2 methods and I'm in the process of setting up the third.

 

Sorry, how I backup data is another story,  but for now I just have individual drives with their own volumes (no array).  But I want to rebuild it in the future and convert it to a raid array with redundancy.   Cheers for the offer.  If setting it up isn't covered satisfactorily in this thread I will certainly seek help.

[FloRolf]

8 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Do you mean backing up data from your computer(s) to your NAS?

Do you mean backing up the server pool data to another pool?

Do you mean backing up the server pool data to a separate server?

 

There's ways to automate all three but the configurations vary. Unless FloRolf wants to set this up too then it's not going to get discussed any time soon. I can help you with that separately though. I've used the first 2 methods and I'm in the process of setting up the third.

In the future I want to do all 3 actually. Or, kind of at least. 

 

The Raid0 SSD Pool will be backupped onto the RaidZ2 and the RaidZ2 will receive regular backups on other external Harddrives that I also don't have at this point. Just for that extra redundancy. I'll not Backup the Games though because that's useless so probably just the Pic and Documents. 

As there's not a whole lot to safe on the actual PCs after that I'll just backup images and whatnot. 

I also want to backup my Dropbox onto the NAS but I'm not sure how to yet. That's for a later date. 

@mr moose

 

 

Update On the topic of 10G though:

I contacted the seller and he replied in a instant with a bunch of good ideas. None of them yielded any success however. The only thing left to try is a brand new Win10 install but I really don't want to do that yet. I'll only do it once the NAS is otherwise fully setup so I don't have to worry about any data anymore. 

The guy mentioned however that while he has reports of problems from other customers, these solution always lead to success. 

 

I did another thing though and that was swapping the Chelsio 10G with the Emulex I bought earlier. This one didn't work in win7 at all but fine in freenas. It apparently also works almost fine in Win10. After some issues with my actual Network and LAN drivers I got it to work and got ~700r/800w speeds in Crystaldisk but only 500r/250w in real world testing. Not too bad nonetheless. 

 

What I'll do next is setup a Win10 VM on my Win7 PC, pass-through the Chelsio NIC and see how it goes. Does that replicate a real Win10 reinstall? Sadly there's no other Win10 machine left for me to try. 

 

 

 

What I can say at this point of the project though:

It keeps me up. 

 

 

Cheers! 

[Windows7ge]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

Sorry, how I backup data is another story,  but for now I just have individual drives with their own volumes (no array).  But I want to rebuild it in the future and convert it to a raid array with redundancy.   Cheers for the offer.  If setting it up isn't covered satisfactorily in this thread I will certainly seek help.

Alright. Just remember, RAID is not a backup. Pools can become corrupted making parity recovery useless.

[Windows7ge]

4 hours ago, FloRolf said:

external Harddrives

How would you plan on using those? Hopefully not connected directly to the server.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Alright. Just remember, RAID is not a backup. Pools can become corrupted making parity recovery useless.

i was hoping to have two 5 drive arrays mirrored. I was under the impression that would provide decent redundancy?

 

 

[Windows7ge]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

i was hoping to have two 5 drive arrays mirrored. I was under the impression that would provide decent redundancy?

So RAID51 or RAID61. That still would be problematic as any corrupted bits from the first RAID5 or 6 would copy to the 2nd. This is one reason why RAID1 is depreciated.

 

If you want to do two 5 drive pools there's a way of mirroring the data where if the data goes bad on one pool you should at least have a majority of intact data on the other assuming only 1 was affected.

[mr moose]

8 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

So RAID51 or RAID61. That still would be problematic as any corrupted bits from the first RAID5 or 6 would copy to the 2nd. This is one reason why RAID1 is depreciated.

 

If you want to do two 5 drive pools there's a way of mirroring the data where if the data goes bad on one pool you should at least have a majority of intact data on the other assuming only 1 was affected.

I look forward to learning more about this.

[Windows7ge]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

I look forward to learning more about this.

It's actually not that difficult. There's only a handful of steps to it. I can't go over it this exact minute but I could have a short guide written up for you by the end of the week if you want.

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

It's actually not that difficult. There's only a handful of steps to it. I can't go over it this exact minute but I could have a short guide written up for you by the end of the week if you want.

Please don't go to any effort right now, I am in the interested stage.  So I won;t be acting on this for a while yet.  I'll at least wait to see how this build goes and look at a few builds without the ssds before I jump.

 

I'll likely start a build log/thread when I do so I'll tag you.  Thank you for being so willing to help. 

[FloRolf]

Wow, long time no update! 

Nothing really happened tho, only these two puppies arrived and got installed. Which means I still need 2 more so I can finally build my RaidZ2. This is taking too damn long, lol. 

 

 

On 12/24/2018 at 4:54 AM, Windows7ge said:

How would you plan on using those? Hopefully not connected directly to the server.

Aaaaaactually.... That was the plan but you just made me realize that's stupid. I'd guess backing stuff up over just my normal PC onto an external drive should be fine? I'd only connect it every once in a month to backup stuff. 

 

Do you also happen to know how I can make my Windows 10 automatically sign into the NAS shares? I've read that you can have both the NAS username and Password the same as Windows username and password and then it automatically connects. 

I have multiple PCs tho running under different names (just like Flo PC, but also PC2, GF PC, HTPC etc.) but only 2 users. Should I rename them all to Flo PC/GF PC so I can automatically sign in or is there a different way? It's kinda annoying, especially when I'll have more than 1 share in the future with the RaidZ2. 

[mr moose]

I was going to comment a few days ago but I figured with Xmas and all you were just busy. 

Are you buying the 4TB drives in pairs or what?

[FloRolf]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I was going to comment a few days ago but I figured with Xmas and all you were just busy. 

Are you buying the 4TB drives in pairs or what?

Yeah I'm buying two at a time from 3 different retailers so I get different batches. Now two are from August 2018 and two October 2017 iirc. 

That way I'll not get a bad batch on more than 2 (chances are better at least) that would blow my Raid up. 

 

I think I'll order the last two this month as well so I can finally finish this. 

 

I'm also searching for "cheap" 10gbit Switches rn that have both sfp+ and RJ45 in 10gbit fashion. Couldn't find a whole lot yet. Was hoping for CES but apparently nobody cares about networking, lol. 

[Windows7ge]

3 hours ago, FloRolf said:

I'd guess backing stuff up over just my normal PC onto an external drive should be fine? I'd only connect it every once in a month to backup stuff. 

It's a little bit backwards but you can do it that way if you want.

 

You could also setup Snapshots & Replication on the server and if configured backup all the data from the Primary pool to a Secondary, a Separate server on the LAN or even a remote server on the WAN.

4 hours ago, FloRolf said:

Do you also happen to know how I can make my Windows 10 automatically sign into the NAS shares?

The only way I know how to do that is to "Only Allow Guest Connections" and give the pool 777 permissions set recursively.

The downside to this is it'll just let anybody in any time over the LAN. SSH/SFTP is not affected by this (except for an annoying bug if your account folder is on the share). WAN connections would still require credentials.

 

If you set SMB to only work over the 10Gbit network security wise this may be less of an issue.

 

3 hours ago, FloRolf said:

I'm also searching for "cheap" 10gbit Switches rn that have both sfp+ and RJ45 in 10gbit fashion. Couldn't find a whole lot yet. Was hoping for CES but apparently nobody cares about networking, lol. 

Yeah that's going to be tough. There was a 4-port SFP+ switch I saw @leadeater link to someone but he mentioned that they're not widely available. If you were able to get one you could buy a SFP+ to Ethernet Transceiver or two but the 10Gbit ones are typically quite expensive.

 

1Gbit version

10Gbit version (You might find them cheaper elsewhere)

 

As for my own 10Gbit ventures I bought the Ubiquiti Networks US-16-XG-US it has what you're asking for but probably not at the price you'd like.

I do have to say though for the ports you get it's a really good deal.

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

There was a 4-port SFP+ switch I saw @leadeater link to someone but he mentioned that they're not widely available.

https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in

 

On paper sounds awesome, would like to actually try it though. Most of these cheap switches, like the Ubnt US16-XG, have strings attached for quirks to them.

[Windows7ge]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

have strings attached for quirks to them.

In how they function or just a lack of features compared to the enterprise?

[leadeater]

20 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

In how they function or just a lack of features compared to the enterprise?

Function, like it can switch 10Gbps fine but if you use L3 routing it goes through the very weak CPU and it can't route at 10Gbps. Stuff like that, may not be the case but that's the stuff I test for.

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Function, like it can switch 10Gbps fine but if you use L3 routing it goes through the very weak CPU and it can't route at 10Gbps. Stuff like that, may not be the case but that's the stuff I test for.

Makes sense. A lot of these switches are labeled partial L3 capable but I think I've also seen full L3 capable. In no application of mine though would I need my switch to route L3 traffic.

 

What type of application would someone want to do this? Perhaps in combination with VLAN's you wanted a particular port or network to send specific network traffic out another interface separating it from the rest, you could configure a route to force that traffic out said interface bypassing the router? Then again I just described a trunk port but that'd be L2 so...

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

What type of application would someone want to do this? Perhaps in combination with VLAN's you wanted a particular port or network to send specific network traffic out another interface separating it from the rest, you could configure a route to force that traffic out said interface bypassing the router? Then again I just described a trunk port but that'd be L2 so...

Virtual host with multiple VLANs which means, or typically, multiple subnets so routing is required to go between those VLANs/subnets. My home network has something like 12 VLANs and 14 subnets.

[Windows7ge]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Virtual host with multiple VLANs which means, or typically, multiple subnets so routing is required to go between those VLANs/subnets. My home network has something like 12 VLANs and 14 subnets.

Jeez, but alright if you have a virtual host with multiple virtual NICs one assigned to each vlan to (I assume) manage each network from "one machine" then that's a way to get it done without a mass of physical cables, NIC's, and ports.

 

I also assume this is a way to eliminate the need for a dedicated physical router. It just saves space and probably headache.

[leadeater]

57 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Jeez, but alright if you have a virtual host with multiple virtual NICs one assigned to each vlan to (I assume) manage each network from "one machine" then that's a way to get it done without a mass of physical cables, NIC's, and ports.

Currently single virtual host but I still have a need for multiple VLANs for different VMs etc. Also have a wireless VLAN, one for iLO/IPMI etc. Just generally setup my network how I would for a corp network.

[Windows7ge]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

Currently single virtual host but I still have a need for multiple VLANs for different VMs etc. Also have a wireless VLAN, one for iLO/IPMI etc. Just generally setup my network how I would for a corp network.

Some day in the future I want to setup my own home network with a pfsense box (or something more up to date) and have several different networks doing several different things.

 

I do wonder now though, I know sub-interfaces can be made along with VLAN tagging to create multiple subnets of a network range say 172.16.0.0/16. I know this can be done with a single physical network port but could the same be done for entirely independent networks? I know subnets are in themselves independent networks but they're generally pieces of a larger singular network. I'm curious to know if a physical port with the assistance of VLAN tagging and a managed switch could have say VLAN1: 10.0.0.0/8, VLAN2: 10.1.0.0/8, VLAN3: 10.2.0.0/8, etc. Is that possible? Would a router let you configure it? From there it'd just be a matter of segregating the ports on the switch. Such functionality I could find useful.

[FloRolf]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in

 

On paper sounds awesome, would like to actually try it though. Most of these cheap switches, like the Ubnt US16-XG, have strings attached for quirks to them.

Yes i've seen that one. It seems to be pretty amazing for the ~$150 price tag! However the RJ45 isn't 10gbit and it only has sfp+ ports. I'd go as far as ~300€ for a decent switch with 10g sfp+ and RJ45. Only one I found was the Netgear XS505M which has 4xRJ45 and 1xSFP+. According to the reviews this thing is loud af tho and I wanna put it directly into my PC room. Don't really wanna mod the thing either. 

 

 

As for the other stuff you guys are talking about... I have legit no damn idea what all of that means I'm a huge networking noob but I already learned a few things building this NAS

It's good to know that I have a few guys here who can or even already do guide me through this little "adventure"

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, FloRolf said:

Yes i've seen that one. It seems to be pretty amazing for the ~$150 price tag! However the RJ45 isn't 10gbit and it only has sfp+ ports. I'd go as far as ~300€ for a decent switch with 10g sfp+ and RJ45.

Just get RJ45 SFP+ modules 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, FloRolf said:

Only one I found was the Netgear XS505M which has 4xRJ45 and 1xSFP+. According to the reviews this thing is loud af tho and I wanna put it directly into my PC room. Don't really wanna mod the thing either. 

The Ubiquiti US-16-XG-US @Windows7ge mentioned is probably the best mixed port type many 10Gbps port switch in the lower price range though I think it maybe be over what you are wanting to spend.

[Windows7ge]

If you're up for it you could build your own switch with as many 10Gbe and SFP+ ports as you want and expand it as you need more. There's a distribution of Linux that lets you do that. Turns any computer into a managed switch.

You could go on eBay or elsewhere to get cheap NIC's. My old single port SFP+ NICs were $24/piece.