G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 FreeNAS/Plex Media Server Question... I realize this topic was already covered but my question is when the project was done did the machine used use hardware RAID o did FreeNAS completely do software RAID? Reason I ask this is I have a Dell Poweredge 2950 which can only do hardware RAID 0 or 1 but I'd love to do RAID 5 is FreeNAS will allow me to do it via software even though the hardware raid controller doesn't support RAID 5. Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Author Share Posted September 8, 2014 One limitation I know I have already from a hard drive stand point is the controller can't read disks above 2TB. I want to run 6 x 2TB in software RAID 5 for a total of 10TB of storage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 FreeNAS offers a solution similar to RAID 5. Its called RAID Z1. It'll save your array from a single drive failure just the same as RAID 5. You really should use RAID Z2 if you actually care about that data though.. But I wont give you the lecture. You'll want (at an absolute min) 8gb of ram. Also, there might be a FW upgrade for that controller that will allow you to use larger drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Author Share Posted September 8, 2014 Machine has 8GB RAM already. I've determined that unfortunately the controller is old enough they never released an update to allow larger drives. Honestly I think 10TB will last me quite a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 A+. Do it live. I just said that because the cost per GB is less with the 3TB drives. The difference wouldn't justify buying a new controller though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Author Share Posted September 8, 2014 Appreciate the information. Just need to to take the time to get 6 drives, 2 more drive caddys and then let the fun begin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 What size drives are you wanting to use for RAID 5? (RAIDZ1 in FreeNAS terms.) I ask because the generally accepted rule-of-thumb is that RAID 5 with anything over 500GB Hard Drives is a very, very bad idea (as in if you think using RAID 5 with them is OK you should really be using scary RAID.) Ref: http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/12/the-history-of-array-splitting http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/one-big-raid-10-a-new-standard-in-server-storage http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/choosing-raid-for-hard-drives-in-2013 http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/choosing-a-raid-level-by-drive-count http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/hardware-and-software-raid http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/08/nearly-as-good-is-not-better http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/07/hot-spare-or-a-hot-mess http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/05/when-no-redundancy-is-more-reliable http://www.smbitjournal.com/2011/09/spotlight-on-smb-storage http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/06/dreaded-array-confusion http://www.smbitjournal.com/2014/07/comparing-raid-10-and-raid-01/ http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/805 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/162 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1670144 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Author Share Posted September 8, 2014 Travis Hershberger Would using Raid 6 (RAID-Z2) be best then with 6x2TB drives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 Most definitely yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Author Share Posted September 8, 2014 Taylor Graham Then that will be the configuration I will end up using. I prefer to have one large volume that will give me the best fault tolerance with the hardware I already have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 Now that I read the comments I see your thinking of using 6 2TB drives in a RAID 5. Assuming a read error rate of 10^14 (almost all drives sold) the likely hood of a rebuild failing is around 75%. As Taylor Graham already stated RAID 6 or RAID 10 would be the best way forward for you imo. RAID 6 in FreeNAS would be RAID Z2 and should be simple to get configured. RAID 10 in FreeNAS is a little more work. You have to start with a single pair of drives in a mirror, and then continue adding 2 drives at a time to the array. Basically they don't have a nice gui option for setting up a RAID10 and you have to make a bunch of mirrors in a single volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted September 8, 2014 Share Posted September 8, 2014 Michael Fullarton Yep, RAID Z2 is the same thing as RAID 6. You'll end up with 8TB usable instead of 10TB, but recovery of a single drive won't be effected by a read error on a single drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 8, 2014 Author Share Posted September 8, 2014 Really appreciate all the input folks. Time to save my pennies to get 6 RD RED 2TB drives to get this project going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 9, 2014 Author Share Posted September 9, 2014 In relation to this, if I want to say start off with just 4 drives to get started, can I easily add additional drive to expand the volume or would it require a complete rebuild? Or would RAID-Z1 with just 3 drives be safe for now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 9, 2014 Author Share Posted September 9, 2014 Appears I've answered the question above, I MAY be able to add additional drives but not easily and maybe not successfully. For all I will be storing on this NAS for now, Movies and TV shows, I am thinking to start 3x2TB drives in RAIDz1 will be best for me. Rebuilding that array if one drive happens to fail shouldn't be too big of a deal? Also I have been reading people using an SSD for cache, I have an 80GB SSD I could use for that, any particular scenarios where this would be useful? Primary use of this NAS is going to be for Plex Media Server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 9, 2014 Share Posted September 9, 2014 It doesn't really matter how many drives you use, just the size of each drive. 2tb drives shouldn't really be part of a z1 array. You can always take a "snapshot" of your nas when you add drives (like a backup), but you'll need that much available storage on a spare drive. With most 2tb drives you shouldnt need a cache drive. My nas has 4x3tb WD Red drives and it consistently saturates a gigabit network card. Thats as fast as you're going to get. Plex runs pretty great on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 9, 2014 Author Share Posted September 9, 2014 Is there a particular reason I would not want to use 2TB drives in a z1? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 9, 2014 Author Share Posted September 9, 2014 Also if I wanted to, z2 with 4x2TB would be the same as me using the hardware RAID1 built into the server. Only difference would be 2 volumes of 2TB instead of one 4TB volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 9, 2014 Share Posted September 9, 2014 Yes. Because they're 2TB. Thats a lot of data. If a drive dies, the other drives in the array will have to resilver that data to a replacement drive. This means those other drives will have to write 2TB of data, which, again, is a lot of data. The chances one of the other drives will encounter an error during that process is high. If you want to learn more about this, or get a more technical explanation, check Travis' links above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 9, 2014 Author Share Posted September 9, 2014 Do you think it is safer to just run two RAID 1 Volumes at the hardware level instead of running software z1 or z2? EDIT: After reading a couple of the articles I think RAID 1 is probably best for my small project. Plex should allow my to add additional folders from different volumes down the road to a library and seem seamless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 9, 2014 Share Posted September 9, 2014 Software RAID is pretty much always better that hardware RAID imo. With hardware RAID, if your controller fails, you could loose all of your data. That's not the case with software RAID. WIth two RAID 1 arrays, you'll end up with the same amount of storage as you could with a single RAID Z2 setup. The mirror would be less fault tolerant than a Z2 array to begin with, and it's based on hardware raid. Raid z2 really is the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Fullarton Posted September 9, 2014 Author Share Posted September 9, 2014 Good point. Going by what you said I can create a snap shot of the array, say RAID 1 to a 3rd 2TB disk? If this is correct I currently have a 2TB Green drive I could use to make a snap shot of the 2x2TB RED's until I can purchase 4x2TB RED's. Once I have all 6 disks I could then build the z2 then move the data from the snap shot to the newly created 6x2TB z2 array? All sounds plausible and do-able in my head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted September 9, 2014 Share Posted September 9, 2014 Yep, that should all be doable. I haven't tried anything like that myself so I'd love to hear how everything goes for you. I have had experience doing some crazy stuff with linux's mdadm and lvm. Good stuff that just works (take THAT storage spaces!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Taylor Graham Posted September 9, 2014 Share Posted September 9, 2014 Yep, snapshots in FreeNAS are pretty great. Make sure you read up on the FreeNAS wiki, it has just about everything you'll need to know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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