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FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

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Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#101

Post by jmporcel »

eric_the_read wrote: post #92
yoasif_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest way to do this is to use mirror vdevs, that way you can add disks two at a time. Of course, you miss out on RAIDZ functionality that way, but that's the simplest setup. I've gone ahead and actually created a new array using btrfs raid10 instead (with an eye towards a RAIDZ2/3 like configuration whenever the btrfs guys get around to fixing it); btrfs allows for online reshaping of the mirroring configurati…

Can you do btrfs with FreeNAS? I didn't think that was available.

If you could, that makes no sense. ZFS is superior.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#102

Post by CamperBob2 »

ultramancool wrote: post #11
tracker1 wrote: post #8

Although I don't think I'd ever DIY another NAS box, I would suggest the following, use a common chipset controller that exposes each drive/device separately with all information, some don't. Also, prefer a system with ECC, Asus supports ECC on most AMD FX supporting motherboards for the less expensive option there. Also, have 2 spare drives on hand. I went back to Synology after my uper-nas crashed and burned (reall…

Those 3TB Seagate drives are literally the worst in the business. The 2TB and 4TB are pretty good (roughly on par or better than competitors according to the backblaze reports) but those 3TB drives were utter shit for some reason, ~20% year over year failure rates. Some retailers have even started to sell the 3TB Seagate drives at almost the same price as the 2TB ones. Probably the only way to get rid of them.

Safe to say the 3 TB drives are 4 TB drives that failed one manufacturing test or another.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#103

Post by takeda »

zzzcpan wrote: post #90

I think NASes should become the things of the past. They are too fragile, too maintenance-greedy and don't scale enough for the modern world. I'd much rather see a tiny distro with ready to use Swift, Gluster, Ceph, whatever, but not ZFS (sorry ZFS fans).

So let me get this straight: running a cluster of swift/gluster/ceph is less maintenance greedy than a single box?

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#104

Post by iberinger »

yoasif_ wrote: post #89
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.

The easiest way to do this is to use mirror vdevs, that way you can add disks two at a time. Of course, you miss out on RAIDZ functionality that way, but that's the simplest setup. I've gone ahead and actually created a new array using btrfs raid10 instead (with an eye towards a RAIDZ2/3 like configuration whenever the btrfs guys get around to fixing it); btrfs allows for online reshaping of the mirroring configurati…

Agreed, mirror vdevs are the way to go. Here's a post that explains the tradeoffs between RAIDZ and mirror vdevs in great detail: http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/06/zfs-you-should-use-mirror-vdevs-...

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#105

Post by zzzcpan »

takeda wrote: post #103
zzzcpan wrote: post #90

I think NASes should become the things of the past. They are too fragile, too maintenance-greedy and don't scale enough for the modern world. I'd much rather see a tiny distro with ready to use Swift, Gluster, Ceph, whatever, but not ZFS (sorry ZFS fans).

So let me get this straight: running a cluster of swift/gluster/ceph is less maintenance greedy than a single box?

Than a single traditional NAS box, yes.

EDIT: Let me explain a bit more: once you start running a distributed system you stop caring about OS, filesystem and disk level issues, because you have redundancy on another level. And it makes all the difference. You don't worry anymore, you can always just reboot, hard-reset or take a node out to investigate. Suddenly you realize that it's not a big deal even if some node starts freezing or some process starts OOMing and crashing, you don't care, you just let them.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#106

Post by bcantrill »

codemac wrote: post #35
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…

> Two copies would not help to determine which bit is the correct one, you would need three. Once you have these, I guess you would be able to detect corruption. Am I guessing correct that duplication beyond 3 times would just help with read speed and in the case when a drive fails while one is already dead (e.g. when you are rebuilding)? You're confusing two topics. Integrity vs. availability. 3x copies, RAID4 XOR,…

It seems that you might have edited your penultimate sentence, but just to make sure that the record is unequivocally clear on this: NetApp and Sun didn't simply "sue each other", NetApp initiated patent litigation against Sun in East Texas, and Sun countersued as a defensive maneuver.[1]

As for your ZFS question, Bonwick's blog is certainly a good source -- though if one is looking for a thorough treatment, I might recommend "Reliability Analysis of ZFS" by Asim Kadav and Abhishek Rajimwale.[2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9129784

[2] http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kadav/zfs/zfsrel.pdf

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#107

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

eric_the_read wrote: post #91
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://jsosic.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/expanding-zfs-zpool-...

Yeah, I saw that before, but that isn't quite what I wanted, if I'm reading it right. That tells me how to replace all the drives in my array with new ones; I'd prefer to (for instance) start with 4x 4TB drives, and add new ones as my storage needs build up.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/6n7ht6qvk/index...

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#108

Post by NeutronBoy »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #47
wilhil wrote: post #43

I have bad memories of freenas (before the split/new version) many years ago when I had a disk and power failure... hdb went, so, c/d moved up a letter and it automatically screwed up raid... ... I was able to recover, but, I remember how many hours I spent on it. Please tell me it is better now?

it's ZFS backed, screwing up the RAID is going to be pretty close to impossible. you can lose the system disk (usb key) that holds your settings, but the data you actually care about will be safe.

I used ZFS in two production instances a few years ago on Solaris, and had two instances of a bug that totally corrupted the superblock on each drive, meaning that all data was gone with no way to recover.

Now I'm back to HW RAID, LVM, and ext4, which works a treat, and I'll be using that until I have more faith in ZFS.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#109

Post by ldehaan »

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…

if you intend to try this, I would recommend getting spinrite at grc.com, and run it a couple times every year, if you're going to be doing a lot of io on it.

I run it on all my hdd's and its kept them alive and running smoothly for years at a time.

Re: FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System

#110

Post by dsr_ »

lima wrote: post #97
rsync wrote: post #61

A FreeNAS device has the ability to do native ZFS send/recv to rsync.net.[1] Always remember to ask about the "HN Readers Discount". [1] http://www.rsync.net/products/zfsintro.html [2] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/rsync-...

Is there any way to use this and encrypt your data?

Not until OpenZFS offers encryption, which might be... in a year or so? There are signs that it's coming along well.
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