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FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

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Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#71

Post by davemtl »

dragontamer wrote: post #54

NAS4Free > FreeNAS. Start your flamewars nerds! -------------- I actually have only used Nas4Free. I know that FreeNAS is technically the fork (despite having the original name), but the technology IMO is quite solid. Its important to know all of the competition however. Here's a basic overview of the technologies: * Nas4Free -- ZFS-based. Free as in beer and Free as in OSS. More barebones and simple than FreeNAS. As…

  know that FreeNAS is technically the fork
FreeNAS as it is today is not a fork, it's a re-write.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#72

Post by goda90 »

jalada wrote: post #67

Correct me if I'm wrong (please!) but FreeNAS still can't (easily?) do what Synology's 'Hybrid RAID' (basically sharded RAID across drives) facilitates; growing your (redundant, e.g. 1 or more parity drives) volume by adding more drives, and also growing your volume by replacing drives with larger ones. I've always thought that was essential, it bemuses me that there aren't many solutions out there that help you do t…

You can grow your volume by replacing drives with larger ones. All have to be replaced first though.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#73

Post by funkaster »

Interesting... Just last week I started building a much simpler/smaller setup based also on ZFS for personal use:

- rpi 3 (running debian testing) - 2x1Tb disks (with usb docking) - zfs (raidz) on the disks - ssh through tor for tunneling purposes

I can backup my personal computers and run some extra stuff on the rpi. Yes, it's only USB2, but I don't care. I mostly send incremental snapshots from my computer and it's fast enough. (e.g. zfs send -i yesterday home/user@today | ssh rpi zfs recv home/user)

I'm tempted on building a small recv server that can allow partial transfers, but so far it works for me. Also, as soon as encryption is enabled on zfs-linux, I'm turning that on :)

Total budget: ~$180 (the most expensive part were obviously the HDDs)

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#74

Post by brink »

funkaster wrote: post #73

Interesting... Just last week I started building a much simpler/smaller setup based also on ZFS for personal use: - rpi 3 (running debian testing) - 2x1Tb disks (with usb docking) - zfs (raidz) on the disks - ssh through tor for tunneling purposes I can backup my personal computers and run some extra stuff on the rpi. Yes, it's only USB2, but I don't care. I mostly send incremental snapshots from my computer and it's…

AFAIK, the Raspberry Pi's put their ethernet on the USB bus. That's a huge downside to using a Raspberry Pi as a NAS solution.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#75

Post by jonathankoren »

lechevalierd3on wrote: post #45

Or if you want a linux flavored version: http://www.openmediavault.org

I was just about to post this. I run OMV at home, and haven't had any problems with it.

I've used both FreeNAS and OMV, and find the OMV community more welcoming and helpful than the FreeNAS one. The FreeNAS community has organized itself with the intent of focusing exclusively on very specific very corporate use case. If you don't fit they're use case, you are bad and should feel bad. OMV on the other hand is much more open and willing to help people use adapt it to their own needs.

With the notable exception of ZFS vs EXT4, they underlying software appears to be the same, which makes the community distinction every more cogent.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#76

Post by funkaster »

brink wrote: post #74
funkaster wrote: post #73

Interesting... Just last week I started building a much simpler/smaller setup based also on ZFS for personal use: - rpi 3 (running debian testing) - 2x1Tb disks (with usb docking) - zfs (raidz) on the disks - ssh through tor for tunneling purposes I can backup my personal computers and run some extra stuff on the rpi. Yes, it's only USB2, but I don't care. I mostly send incremental snapshots from my computer and it's…

AFAIK, the Raspberry Pi's put their ethernet on the USB bus. That's a huge downside to using a Raspberry Pi as a NAS solution.

that's true. But as I said before, I'm not after speed or actually using this a NAS, more like a backup server (where I can ~send~ my zfs snapshots).

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#77

Post by eric_the_read »

One thing that's been unclear to me with ZFS: How should I design a ZFS-based storage system for extensibility? From what I've read, it seems like you can't add devices to a pool once it's been created. I'd love to create a small-ish NAS right now to store, say, the top 10% of my blu-ray collection, and then incrementally upgrade it over time as I get funds.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#78

Post by dhess »

FireBeyond wrote: post #40
allendoerfer wrote: post #32

Storage is a really weak area of mine, but it is important, and I do not see much technical discussion here anyway, so I am going to expose myself: How does integrity protection work in practice? I know that the bits on the HDD itself do not map one to one to bits you can actually use and that it uses that to protect us from flipped bits. I know that beyond that RAID/RAIDZ is supposed to help. I guess redundancy alon…

Give your computer ECC memory. Configure ZFS to scrub data regularly. It can be configured to email you of impending (SMART) or actual failure. You can label drives by ID/SN, or if your chassis or controller supports it, it can blink to tell you what drive to replace. It can be configured with a hot spare so the "resilver" starts immediately on failure detection, not "when you happen to fix".

FYI for those running ZFS on Linux or FreeNAS (and maybe FreeBSD, as well):

The nice zfs built-in autoreplace functionality doesn't work on Linux or FreeNAS. You need some scripting/external tooling to do the equivalent. See

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/2449

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/zol-hotspa...

I've had a few drives fail on my ZFS for Linux fileserver and wondered why my hot spares weren't automatically kicking in, and this is why.

On Linux, if you don't use the zed script that's referenced in that Github issue above and just replace a failing drive manually, a hot spare is worse than useless, because you need to remove the hot spare from the array before you can use it with a manual replace operation.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#79

Post by trizic »

benologist wrote: post #2

Another open source option is Synology's Disk Station Manager which includes a bunch of open source software they've skinned and created mobile apps for so you can localize stuff like music streaming, dropbox, notes etc - https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/live_demo

The code base isn't open source. They modify the linux kernel so that is available (or will be soon). But Xpenology simply only allows you to run their closed source code on any computer.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#80

Post by snvzz »

eric_the_read wrote: post #77

One thing that's been unclear to me with ZFS: How should I design a ZFS-based storage system for extensibility? From what I've read, it seems like you can't add devices to a pool once it's been created. I'd love to create a small-ish NAS right now to store, say, the top 10% of my blu-ray collection, and then incrementally upgrade it over time as I get funds.

You can add vdev to pool anytime. Removing them is not as easy, so some planning is necessary.
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