121–130 of 182 posts
I've been using Unraid for a few months. It has a different - arguably inferior - parity strategy but has amazing support for VMs. I've got my gaming machine, my GPU dev box and a bunch of smaller services all in the same box and can do some really sweet online configuration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
> With the notable exception of ZFS vs EXT4, they underlying software appears to be the same, Huh no. OMV is Linux + PHP.
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…
I'm not sure about FreeNAS, but I do want to point out this is possible in the btrfs filesystem (sharded raid across drives). I'm not aware of any FreeNAS equivalents though utilizing it, but rolling your own is certainly an option.
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?
This is unrelated to ZFS send/recv, other than the fact that we are also the only cloud storage platform to offer borg/attic support.
All the major solutions have their drawbacks. For example, btrfs' present day raid code is in such bad shape that apparently it needs a total rewrite. zfs' volumes can't grow without a resliver, which is not something a home user should ever have to do.
From a design perspective, the internals of both btrfs and zfs are only accessible to experts and totally opaque to their users. I've long thought someone could come along and write a FUSE-based distributed storage layer that sat on top of existing file system abstractions like ext4, etc. And that a system built that way could just crush both of those solutions in almost every conceivable way. I've toyed with writing it myself.
This approach might not be the fastest, but it would be the most flexible, possibly very reliable, and as a bonus it would be really easy for average users to grok and maximize their data recovery from all but the most catastrophic events.
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.
Also, back blaze statistics only apply if you're operating at back blaze's scale. If you're making a home NAS you would have to be _incredibly_ unlucky to hit a bad drive as quickly as back blaze did. I
Upon seeing FreeNAS Mini, I have to say that I'm really interested. I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of keeping all of my data "in the cloud". Being able to keep a local version of all my media would help give me peace of mind.
Is maintaining your own "personal cloud", if you will, a reasonable use-case for this? What are the proper expectations from a maintenance perspective? i.e. How often should I expect things to break or require tuning / fixing?
This is probably a really stupid question, but for what kinds of applications or scenarios are people using FreeNAS? I'm interested in hearing about regular users, not business or enterprises. Upon seeing FreeNAS Mini, I have to say that I'm really interested. I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of keeping all of my data "in the cloud". Being able to keep a local version of all my media would help gi…
This is not the only copy of any of this stuff, though. The photos get synced to S3 and backed up on a second local hard drive. All of the movies I have are rips of DVDs and Blu-Rays I still own, and can use if needed. And my music is all in Apple Music/iTunes Match (and on my computer, backed up via both Time Machine and Crashplan).
So, I'm using the server really as convenient local storage for stuff, not as an alternative to the cloud.
It's funny that we've come so far in computing and yet reliable data storage is still such an unsolved problem for 99.9% of the world's consumers. All the major solutions have their drawbacks. For example, btrfs' present day raid code is in such bad shape that apparently it needs a total rewrite. zfs' volumes can't grow without a resliver, which is not something a home user should ever have to do. From a design persp…
Hyperbole, yes, but the point is that the devil is in the details, and there's a hell of a lot of caveats to the term "reliable data storage". For example, in the modern era, if someone had a way to make ye olde floppy disks 100% reliable for 10 decades, they still wouldn't be used by that 99.9%, simply due to the low data capacity.