Questions About Server Hardware and ZFS

[Jarsky]

8 minutes ago, Kered124 said:

The testing was done on a windows machine with an i7 4770, 16gb ram, and the file was stored on an SSD. I also noticed the same problem on our older roku 2, but assumed the issue stemmed from being old.

And its transcoding? Not trying to direct play? Direct Play can be very taxing if you're playing 1080p DTS content without a DTS direct receiver. 

 

55 minutes ago, Kered124 said:

Alright, ill contact amazon for a return. The past 2 seagate drives I ordered from them have gad bad blocks from day 1, I don't understand the problem. I have never had great luck with seagate drives as far as lifespan is concerned, but I'm surprised to see any brand new drives with bad blocks.

 

General consumer drives arent validated, so are more likely to be DoA when received from a vendor as compared to Enterprise drives. Enterprise drives are validated before they leave the manufacturer. One of the downsides to using *cheaper* drives. 

[Kered124]

2 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

And its transcoding? Not trying to direct play? Direct Play can be very taxing if you're playing 1080p DTS content without a DTS direct receiver. 

How can I validate this? I was using a bog standard fresh install of plex server for testing. 

[Jarsky]

Just now, Kered124 said:

How can I validate this? I was using a bog standard fresh install of plex server for testing. 

Direct Play is a client side option. I don't use Roku so not sure myself - but this KB suggests its in your User Settings, then try setting Direct Play to Disabled:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/204275243-settings-plex-for-roku/

[Kered124]

2 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

Direct Play is a client side option. I don't use Roku so not sure myself - but this KB suggests its in your User Settings, then try setting Direct Play to Disabled:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/204275243-settings-plex-for-roku/

Thank you, I will give this a try tonight! I have also noticed some audio sync issues with Plex, that are fixed by pausing the media and unpausing. Have you seen this/ heard how to fix it?

[dalekphalm]

49 minutes ago, Kered124 said:

The testing was done on a windows machine with an i7 4770, 16gb ram, and the file was stored on an SSD. I also noticed the same problem on our older roku 2, but assumed the issue stemmed from being old.

I would still check your system resources on the Plex Server - especially if it's a 4770 running off an SSD. Could be a problem with the system - very easy to test and rule that out, so why not?

 

Otherwise, hard to say. What codec and bitrate is the 1080p file?

[Planet86]

On 7/9/2018 at 9:22 PM, Mikensan said:

No issues setting up jails, but you have to be mindful to mount persistent storage. As the base kernel for freenas updates the jail does not, and in order to update the jail you have to rebuild it - without persistent storage you'll loose everything. Which one might think "fine I'll leave it at a slightly older version of BSD" until the port requires a kernel update :-(. 

 

**Also what will the move to iocage mean for users using warden?

 

Moving to iocage you will be able to update the base of the jails.  There is supposed to be a tool to transfer warden to iocage.  

[Kered124]

Alright, update time!

 

I have finally gotten my last hard drive tested and ready to go with no errors!

The plan is to use 5 2Tb disks, and one smaller SSD for caching. 

For the SSD cache, I have some options, as well as questions.

 

I have a 64Gb, 120Gb, and 256Gb ssd spare currently. I would like to use the 64Gb ssd if I can, as I don't have much else to use it for, but if it won't perform well as a cache, I am willing to install something larger.

 

1. How much does the cache size matter?

-My usage case would be running Plex, and some VM's with average usage, nothing heavy duty.

 

2. Opinions on using redundant flash drives for boot- is this really recommended, or is it very difficult to recover a system after the OS drive is dead?

 

3. What plugins exist for doing backups to this machine? - Do I just need to make a password protected share and do backups to it through Windows, or are there better options?

 

 

Thanks for all of the help so far everyone!

 

 

 

[NelizMastr]

On 7/10/2018 at 2:26 AM, dalekphalm said:

Huh? There's a perfectly good working free version of Plex.

 

You can pay for Plex Pass that enables some advanced features, such as simplified remote-access to your media, but I've used Plex for literal years perfectly fine without paying. 

Through the browser, yes. But you have to buy the apps or get the plex pass to stream media to other places. If you don't, then that means you've already paid at some point.

[dalekphalm]

6 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

Through the browser, yes. But you have to buy the apps or get the plex pass to stream media to other places. If you don't, then that means you've already paid at some point.

I'm not sure I understand what your issue is, exactly.

 

You have to pay to get the easy-to-access Remote Access, yes. But you can do it free if you're savvy enough (Setup a VPN, for example).

 

You also only have to pay for the mobile apps (iOS and Android), if I recall correctly.

 

All the other apps (Roku, ChromeCast, Smart TV, etc) are all free.

 

You can get a well rounded experience without Plex Pass. As I said, I did it for years. I bought a Plex Pass mostly just to support them, after having gotten literal years of excellent product out of them for free.

[dalekphalm]

7 hours ago, Kered124 said:

Alright, update time!

 

I have finally gotten my last hard drive tested and ready to go with no errors!

The plan is to use 5 2Tb disks, and one smaller SSD for caching. 

For the SSD cache, I have some options, as well as questions.

 

I have a 64Gb, 120Gb, and 256Gb ssd spare currently. I would like to use the 64Gb ssd if I can, as I don't have much else to use it for, but if it won't perform well as a cache, I am willing to install something larger.

 

1. How much does the cache size matter?

-My usage case would be running Plex, and some VM's with average usage, nothing heavy duty.

 

2. Opinions on using redundant flash drives for boot- is this really recommended, or is it very difficult to recover a system after the OS drive is dead?

 

3. What plugins exist for doing backups to this machine? - Do I just need to make a password protected share and do backups to it through Windows, or are there better options?

 

 

Thanks for all of the help so far everyone!

 

 

 

I can't speak about the SSD Cache, since I opted not to use one.

 

But I can speak about the Boot Drive.

 

So there are a couple different ways to think about it.

 

1. Reinstalling FreeNAS is stupid simple, and during reinstallation, you can re-import your existing ZFS pool and data. However, you'll lose all your configurations (Eg: Snapshot settings, scheduled tasks, shared network folders, etc). So you'd have to manually set all that back up.

2. You can, however, export your settings. You can probably also automate this using a scheduled task to export settings on a regular basis.

3. If you use a Mirrored Boot Drive (equivalent to RAID1), you can more easily recover from a boot drive hardware failure - if the drives (USB or otherwise) are cheap enough, I would probably just do it.

 

I run my FreeNAS system off of an ESXi VM, so my setup is a bit different, but the "boot drive" is ultimately running on a RAID1 mirrored array (technically the VHD is running on the RAID1), from the hardware RAID Card in my server. If I were running bare metal FreeNAS, I would personally opt for a Mirrored Boot Drive.

[Mikensan]

8 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

Through the browser, yes. But you have to buy the apps or get the plex pass to stream media to other places. If you don't, then that means you've already paid at some point.

It actually works very well in chrome on android, hit full screen and you'd never know the difference. From the chrome browser on android you can still cast it to anything. As long as you can open a browser that supports html 5, you can stream plex.

[Mikensan]

1. How much does the cache size matter?

-My usage case would be running Plex, and some VM's with average usage, nothing heavy duty.

If you're running a gigabit network, it doesn't. If you plan to use NFS datastores on vmware, then 4k IOPS matters a LOT. Though you could chance it and use async, but get a UPS and a script to turn everything off after a powerloss. Personally I'd just use iSCSI. Otherwise you don't need extra cache, RAM is sufficient. 

 

2. Opinions on using redundant flash drives for boot- is this really recommended, or is it very difficult to recover a system after the OS drive is dead?

Really all about availability. I've had a flash drive die, and restored from a config backup and was up and running within 30 minutes. All my iSCSI / SMB / etc.. all just worked. Even when it died it was working, I didn't realize my flash had died until I rebooted lol.

 

3. What plugins exist for doing backups to this machine? - Do I just need to make a password protected share and do backups to it through Windows, or are there better options?

If you're pushing updates, then just install whatever backup software you want on each client and push it to a SMB share. If you want to pull updates then there's rsync for linux/unix clients or you could use syncthing for all your devices (requires software on the client/mobile devices).

 

Personally I rather let the clients push their backups and solely rely on the NAS initiating the backup. If the service stops on the NAS for any reason you'll never know that the backup failed. Client side - most backup solutions will give you a popup, and 1 outage won't effect everything.

 

**I would prefer rsync when available because it can handle delta copies and just reduce how much it has to sync. More and more solutions offer this though. Say if you edit a movie - just add a single frame, most backups would copy the entire movie over, whereas rsync would only sync the bits of the file that changed.

[Kered124]

15 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I can't speak about the SSD Cache, since I opted not to use one.

 

But I can speak about the Boot Drive.

 

So there are a couple different ways to think about it.

 

1. Reinstalling FreeNAS is stupid simple, and during reinstallation, you can re-import your existing ZFS pool and data. However, you'll lose all your configurations (Eg: Snapshot settings, scheduled tasks, shared network folders, etc). So you'd have to manually set all that back up.

2. You can, however, export your settings. You can probably also automate this using a scheduled task to export settings on a regular basis.

3. If you use a Mirrored Boot Drive (equivalent to RAID1), you can more easily recover from a boot drive hardware failure - if the drives (USB or otherwise) are cheap enough, I would probably just do it.

 

 

Thank you for the info, this helped me make my decision. Since uptime isn't my main concern, (considering flash drive failures aren't crazy common) I think I will just use one for now, and backup my config somewhat regularly. My main concern was not being able to easily import ZFS pools/data.

 

EDIT:

 

I found a second flash drive on my desk of the same size and model as the first, already empty. I might as well set up the RAID 1 mirror!

[Kered124]

I'm actually about to install FreeNAS now, and let it begin building the array. Hopefully all goes well! 

I also think I am going to ignore the cache option for now, as it sounds a little more in depth than I had hoped.  ( although I do have another server sitting next to me doing absolutely nothing, so I may throw some smaller spare drives in it and play around a little)

 

Some more questions:

 

1. Anyone have recommendations for a client side backup solution? I used to use crashplan, but it has since been neglected and sort of dying.

 

2. I have a couple extra raspberry pi model 2b units that I have yet to find projects for- anyone have experience using these for anything cool with freenas? (media streaming, smart home control, anything else cool)

 

3. When I have a drive failure with FreeNAS, what does the replacement procedure look like- and can I have the system notify me via text or email?

 

Thanks again for all of the help!

[Mikensan]

1. Anyone have recommendations for a client side backup solution? I used to use crashplan, but it has since been neglected and sort of dying.

What operating systems? For windows, i've been using Veeam Windows Agent, they also have a NFR license which gives you free features to backup your hypervisor.

Few more options: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/software

 

2. I have a couple extra raspberry pi model 2b units that I have yet to find projects for- anyone have experience using these for anything cool with freenas? (media streaming, smart home control, anything else cool)

Set one up to pull data and display a dashboard using something like Grafana. You can also have logs sent to it via ELK stack. Good idea to have your monitoring solution outside of your virtualization stack.

Example @jkirkcaldy's dashboard: https://grafana.themainframe.co.uk/

 

3. When I have a drive failure with FreeNAS, what does the replacement procedure look like- and can I have the system notify me via text or email?

I'm a huge advocate of setting up mail alerts on freenas, it's very easy. I've had to resilver 2 disks since I setup my freeNAS box, it's very easy. I just yanked the old, plopped in the new, and click a single button.

 

Now to find the culprit the "blnk LED" didn't work for my scenario, so I just noted the serial number (view disks), turned off freenas, and pulled each each disk to figure out which one.

[Kered124]

On 7/26/2018 at 8:34 AM, Mikensan said:

1. Anyone have recommendations for a client side backup solution? I used to use crashplan, but it has since been neglected and sort of dying.

What operating systems? For windows, i've been using Veeam Windows Agent, they also have a NFR license which gives you free features to backup your hypervisor.

Few more options: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/software

 

2. I have a couple extra raspberry pi model 2b units that I have yet to find projects for- anyone have experience using these for anything cool with freenas? (media streaming, smart home control, anything else cool)

Set one up to pull data and display a dashboard using something like Grafana. You can also have logs sent to it via ELK stack. Good idea to have your monitoring solution outside of your virtualization stack.

Example @jkirkcaldy's dashboard: https://grafana.themainframe.co.uk/

 

3. When I have a drive failure with FreeNAS, what does the replacement procedure look like- and can I have the system notify me via text or email?

I'm a huge advocate of setting up mail alerts on freenas, it's very easy. I've had to resilver 2 disks since I setup my freeNAS box, it's very easy. I just yanked the old, plopped in the new, and click a single button.

 

Now to find the culprit the "blnk LED" didn't work for my scenario, so I just noted the serial number (view disks), turned off freenas, and pulled each each disk to figure out which one.

 

This is very helpful, thank you! I will definitely be looking into the Pi project, and veeam for my backups.

I figured that is how I could find the bad disks, but hoped there was an easier way=P I think I will just make a spreadsheet and document my disks by sata port and serial number, so I don't need to pull all of them out (not in tool-less bays)

 

Thank you again for all of the help and suggestions! 

[Kered124]

Update 2!

 

I had an awful time trying to get FreeNas installed- I think I'll blame it on my hardware/ myself. I was using rufus to write the FreeNas ISO to my flash drives in DD mode, but got very weird results, like the menu for the old operating system I had on the flash drive popping up instead of FreeNas. (along with tons of other weirdness, the install took me over 2 hours, and I have never had this much trouble)

 

BUT, now it is installed! (on only one flash drive...)

 

I have begun to run into additional problems that are probably caused by my lack of research. I'll leave some screenshots below.

 

Here is what I have done. 

1. Created a storage pool, it is ZFS1, not 2, as I didn't have enough disks to get the storage I wanted in the current config. I'd like to add another 2tb drive at some point further on and set it up to be a hotspare, minimally. 

2. I created two datasets, one called general data, and one called Plex Media.

 

The current problem comes when trying to create a SMB share for either of these datasets. I am not entirely sure what the issue is, in the tutorials I watched, there was no warning or problems at this step.

 

Please let me know if I need to provide any more info (I wasn't sure what I should include, but assume there will be something)

 

Thanks so much for all of the help and information!

[Mikensan]

While Rufus via DD mode should've worked, they do recommend win32 disk imager (which pretty much just writes the ISO straight like DD)

 

Did you install the beta?

What issues are you having with the SMB share? Permission error / unreachable / empty folders?

[Kered124]

6 hours ago, Mikensan said:

While Rufus via DD mode should've worked, they do recommend win32 disk imager (which pretty much just writes the ISO straight like DD)

 

Did you install the beta?

What issues are you having with the SMB share? Permission error / unreachable / empty folders?

I believe I did install the beta. - I used 11.2-beta1

 

The issue is with the creation of the share- In the screenshots I uploaded, the VFS options are upset, and won't let me create a share unless I go through and deselect all of them. I'm not sure if I did something wrong with my dataset settings that is making this process upset?

[Mikensan]

23 hours ago, Kered124 said:

I believe I did install the beta. - I used 11.2-beta1

 

The issue is with the creation of the share- In the screenshots I uploaded, the VFS options are upset, and won't let me create a share unless I go through and deselect all of them. I'm not sure if I did something wrong with my dataset settings that is making this process upset?

oh ok, that is odd. Those are the standard VFS options I believe.. When you created the dataset, you checked the box for "windows permissions"?

[Kered124]

Update:

 

I rebooted the system for the first time so far, and it eliminated the weird issues with the VFS settings.

 

I wouldn't think that I should have needed to, but oh well, it works now!

 

After setting up the rest of my shares and moving in some data, what is next? I'd assume plugins and VMs are a good place to start while I wait for data to transfer?

[Mikensan]

1 hour ago, Kered124 said:

Update:

 

I rebooted the system for the first time so far, and it eliminated the weird issues with the VFS settings.

 

I wouldn't think that I should have needed to, but oh well, it works now!

 

After setting up the rest of my shares and moving in some data, what is next? I'd assume plugins and VMs are a good place to start while I wait for data to transfer?

Well keep in mind it is Beta, so it is possible the config may get reset by its release. Sometimes enough changes that the final patch requires a reset of all settings.

But your data shouldn't be lost, the ZFS volumes should remain unaffected.

 

I'm not crazy about running services directly off of FreeNAS personally. VMs and Jails are actively being worked on right now as a matter of fact, so that I feel like has a very high chance of getting reset when the final version is released. 

 

Otherwise you can do whatever you want.

 

[Kered124]

7 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Well keep in mind it is Beta, so it is possible the config may get reset by its release. Sometimes enough changes that the final patch requires a reset of all settings.

But your data shouldn't be lost, the ZFS volumes should remain unaffected.

 

I'm not crazy about running services directly off of FreeNAS personally. VMs and Jails are actively being worked on right now as a matter of fact, so that I feel like has a very high chance of getting reset when the final version is released. 

 

Otherwise you can do whatever you want.

 

So is your suggestion to run the services I want in virtual machines for now?

[Mikensan]

5 minutes ago, Kered124 said:

So is your suggestion to run the services I want in virtual machines for now?

In whichever way you want off the FreeNAS host. You could run plex off your personal desktop or as a VM in ESXi - which makes the most sense to you.

 

I would advise not running services on the FreeNAS box if you're going to use Beta as you may have to redo everything as it is patched.

 

Overall I'm not a fan of running services on a storage server, but sometimes you have to work with what you got. I'm not saying you -should- not or telling anyone how to do anything, just a personal preference.

[Kered124]

Alright, so I am sort of stuck.

 

I'd really like to use the plex plugin, as it is supposed to be pretty streamlined from what I understand. I went to the plugins section, and clicked install. It created a jail which got an IP address. Now what? I have been looking for plex settings to set up my media and options, but must be missing a step/ looking right past them!