NAS Software

[Real_PhillBert]

I am rapidly running out of space on my HDD's so I am planning on building a NAS to handle all of my storage. But I know nothing about the available software options. 

 

Why would one use a program like FreeNAS instead of just windows and a homegroup? I have my current main machine set up in my home group and am able to get files or stream media from it to other locations...

 

Can someone explain the advantage to me?

[Volbet]

The first major advantage of FreeNAS is that it's free. Windows cost money (for most people) and if all you want to do is run a NAS, FreeNAS will be just as good as Windows.

FreeNAS also use the ZFS file system, which has certain advantages over NTFS. Especially when it comes to RAID configurations. 

Of course, if your NAS dies in one way or the other, it can be a bitch to restore the data, since ZFS isn't widely supported.

 

Since It's free I would say it's atleast worth a try. If you find it not to your liking, you can always throw Windows or Windows Server on the NAS.

[Flyguygamer]

The first major advantage of FreeNAS is that it's free. Windows cost money (for most people) and if all you want to do is run a NAS, FreeNAS will be just as good as Windows.

FreeNAS also use the ZFS file system, which has certain advantages over NTFS. Especially when it comes to RAID configurations. 

Of course, if your NAS dies in one way or the other, it can be a bitch to restore the data, since ZFS isn't widely supported.

 

Since It's free I would say it's atleast worth a try. If you find it not to your liking, you can always throw Windows or Windows Server on the NAS.

The advantage of being a Microsoft partner

Pay $500 per year and get 10 windows, 20 office, 1 server, and a ton of other stuff.

[Real_PhillBert]

The first major advantage of FreeNAS is that it's free. Windows cost money (for most people) and if all you want to do is run a NAS, FreeNAS will be just as good as Windows.

FreeNAS also use the ZFS file system, which has certain advantages over NTFS. Especially when it comes to RAID configurations. 

Of course, if your NAS dies in one way or the other, it can be a bitch to restore the data, since ZFS isn't widely supported.

 

Since It's free I would say it's atleast worth a try. If you find it not to your liking, you can always throw Windows or Windows Server on the NAS.

 

Thanks for the quick response!

 

I will have to do a bit of research on ZFS. I was planning on 5x 3TB WD Reds in raid5.

[Real_PhillBert]

The advantage of being a Microsoft partner

Pay $500 per year and get 10 windows, 20 office, 1 server, and a ton of other stuff.

Do you have an extra microsoft server laying around?

[Volbet]

Thanks for the quick response!

 

I will have to do a bit of research on ZFS. I was planning on 5x 3TB WD Reds in raid5.

ZFS does fix a lot of the problems some systems have with RAID 5. http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/linux_unix/article.php/3842741/10-Reasons-You-Need-to-Look-at-ZFS.htm

But if you throw in a decent RAID card, it shouldn't be a problem

 

The advantage of being a Microsoft partner

Pay $500 per year and get 10 windows, 20 office, 1 server, and a ton of other stuff.

That is pretty cool. 

I only get Office for free, but I can usually bum Windows keys from the jobs I work. Small business always have to many keys. 

[Real_PhillBert]

ZFS does fix a lot of the problems some systems have with RAID 5. http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/linux_unix/article.php/3842741/10-Reasons-You-Need-to-Look-at-ZFS.htm

But if you throw in a decent RAID card, it shouldn't be a problem

 

That brings me to my next question, RAID cards. What do you look for in a raid card? Just enough SATA/SASS connections and RAID configurations?

[Volbet]

That brings me to my next question, RAID cards. What do you look for in a raid card? Just enough SATA/SASS connections and RAID configurations?

You should look for one that supports the amount of drives you have, but possibly also the drives you might want in the future.

I would also suggest getting one with a battery pack. 

As for SATA and SAS.: If you are only going to use SATA drives it doesn't really matter what you get. SAS is compatible with SATA, but SATA is not compatible with SAS. 

 

But RAID controllers and ZFS aren't the best of friends. ZFS really want to get direct control of the drives. If you want to add more SATA ports, then look for recommendations of cards online.

Another thing to keep in mind. ZFS work in odd numbers, so you always need an odd number of drives, so 3.5,7 etc. 

[Blade of Grass]

The first major advantage of FreeNAS is that it's free. Windows cost money (for most people) and if all you want to do is run a NAS, FreeNAS will be just as good as Windows.

FreeNAS also use the ZFS file system, which has certain advantages over NTFS. Especially when it comes to RAID configurations. 

Of course, if your NAS dies in one way or the other, it can be a bitch to restore the data, since ZFS isn't widely supported.

 

Since It's free I would say it's atleast worth a try. If you find it not to your liking, you can always throw Windows or Windows Server on the NAS.

It's actually pretty widely supported on Linux, I know for sure that you can get it on CentOS, RHEL, Sl, Debian, and Arch, but I'm sure that there are more distros that support it. 

 

Thanks for the quick response!

 

I will have to do a bit of research on ZFS. I was planning on 5x 3TB WD Reds in raid5.

 I would still suggest RAID 6 instead of RAID 5, even with ZFS.

 

That brings me to my next question, RAID cards. What do you look for in a raid card? Just enough SATA/SASS connections and RAID configurations?

Hardware RAID controllers are less important if you're running software RAID. You basically only need a HBA (Host Bus Adapter), or something that allows you to run JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks).

You can also get an LSI RAID card that can be flashed into interface mode (basically making it a HBA). Other than that, make sure it has enough SATA connectors.

[Padunkadunk]

I use Windows Server 2012 on my home server and have no complaints.

[Real_PhillBert]

But RAID controllers and ZFS aren't the best of friends. ZFS really want to get direct control of the drives. If you want to add more SATA ports, then look for recommendations of cards online.

Another thing to keep in mind. ZFS work in odd numbers, so you always need an odd number of drives, so 3.5,7 etc. 

So if I run a raid card I would want to run windows over freenas? Sorry if I seem like a bumbling noob, but I really am a server noob.

[Real_PhillBert]

 I would still suggest RAID 6 instead of RAID 5, even with ZFS.

 

Just out of curiosity, why is that? just for the extra redundancy?

 

Hardware RAID controllers are less important if you're running software RAID. You basically only need a HBA (Host Bus Adapter), or something that allows you to run JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks).

You can also get an LSI RAID card that can be flashed into interface mode (basically making it a HBA). Other than that, make sure it has enough SATA connectors.

 

Break this down for me like I am 4 please lol. 

[Volbet]

It's actually pretty widely supported on Linux, I know for sure that you can get it on CentOS, RHEL, Sl, Debian, and Arch, but I'm sure that there are more distros that support it. 

 

I know the support has been build into some Linux distros, but when I worked with it last, it was kinda meh.

You would get a lot of corrupted file, but that is of course better than nothing. 

But the last time I tried to restore from ZFS was a year (or so) ago, so the support has probably become better.

 

 

So if I run a raid card I would want to run windows over freenas? Sorry if I seem like a bumbling noob, but I really am a server noob.

You can find RAID controllers that will work with FreeNAS, and there are tweaks in FreeNAS that can make it work.

If you really want to use a dedicated RAID controller, you can use Windows or a Linux distro. 

[Real_PhillBert]

I use Windows Server 2012 on my home server and have no complaints.

 

Thanks for the data point

[Blade of Grass]

Just out of curiosity, why is that? just for the extra redundancy?

When a drive in your RAID array fails, the array is said to be in a degraded state. To restore it back to normal, you need to replace the drive and rebuild the array. Other than the write whole issues, one of the largest concerns with RAID 5 is that there is only one extra copy of the data. While this might not seem like an issue during normal use (it's not), when it comes to rebuilding an array this becomes very problematic. All hard drives will have something called a BER (Bit Error Rate), which is the rate at which the drive will get a URE (Unrecoverable Read Error) (sorry for all the jargon). On most consumer drives, this rate is 1 unreadable sector per 10^14 bits read. Now, to rebuild an array, you need to read all the data off the rest of the drives, so, the probability that a URE will occur during the rebuild of a RAID 5 array, causing the rebuild to fail is much higher than in a RAID 6 array. I won't bore you with the math, but it's well explained here. tl;dr for that, assuming a 6 disk array, 1/80 RAID 5 arrays fail during rebuild, whereas 1/1982 RAID 6 arrays fail.

I can break this down even more if you want.

 

Break this down for me like I am 4 please lol. 

No problem.

If you are running software RAID, the capabilities of the RAID controller is not very important, because you will most likely not be using those features. What you really want is to just present the OS with a bunch of HDDs and let the RAID software do as it pleases. If you can, I would say just use the onboard SATA ports on your motherboard and not worry about getting a RAID card. 

[Real_PhillBert]

When a drive in your RAID array fails, the array is said to be in a degraded state. To restore it back to normal, you need to replace the drive and rebuild the array. Other than the write whole issues, one of the largest concerns with RAID 5 is that there is only one extra copy of the data. While this might not seem like an issue during normal use (it's not), when it comes to rebuilding an array this becomes very problematic. All hard drives will have something called a BER (Bit Error Rate), which is the rate at which the drive will get a URE (Unrecoverable Read Error) (sorry for all the jargon). On most consumer drives, this rate is 1 unreadable sector per 10^14 bits read. Now, to rebuild an array, you need to read all the data off the rest of the drives, so, the probability that a URE will occur during the rebuild of a RAID 5 array, causing the rebuild to fail is much higher than in a RAID 6 array. I won't bore you with the math, but it's well explained here. tl;dr for that, assuming a 6 disk array, 1/80 RAID 5 arrays fail during rebuild, whereas 1/1982 RAID 6 arrays fail.

I can break this down even more if you want.

 

No problem.

If you are running software RAID, the capabilities of the RAID controller is not very important, because you will most likely not be using those features. What you really want is to just present the OS with a bunch of HDDs and let the RAID software do as it pleases. If you can, I would say just use the onboard SATA ports on your motherboard and not worry about getting a RAID card. 

 

Thank you for the break down!

 

Perhaps I would be better off just using the onboard SATA ports and rely on the onboard raid configs. Saves a bit of money and its only a smallish home server so the demand will be pretty low.

 

How much CPU power do you need for this kind of configuration? Is an i3 enough or should I go for a low end i5?

[Flyguygamer]

Do you have an extra microsoft server laying around?

I might. When I get home I can take a look.

[Blade of Grass]

Thank you for the break down!

 

Perhaps I would be better off just using the onboard SATA ports and rely on the onboard raid configs. Saves a bit of money and its only a smallish home server so the demand will be pretty low.

 

How much CPU power do you need for this kind of configuration? Is an i3 enough or should I go for a low end i5?

If you're planning on using ZFS you should use ECC RAM with it too (you also should have 1GB of free RAM per TB of storage).

[Real_PhillBert]

If you're planning on using ZFS you should use ECC RAM with it too (you also should have 1GB of free RAM per TB of storage).

Wow that is a lot more ram than I thought it would need. I may have to keep my eyes open for a deal on 16GB ram kits.

 

Thanks a ton for your help!

[Nuluvius]

The problem with FreeNAS is that while yes it is free, it is total garbage however. It can be difficult to get it to work nicely with certain components let alone stay stable once it is actually working. Not surprisingly a big turn off when trusting the thing with a massive amount of data.

 

I moved to Synology and have never looked back.