Thinking about switching from Server 2012 to FreeNAS

T

TheGamerZ

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 18, 2003
Messages
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System is as follows:

CPUs: 2 x Xeon E5450
Mobo: Superemicro X7DVL-3
RAM: 16gb of ECC DDR2 PC2-5300
Storage: HGST 4TB & (2)Samsung 2TB


All I use it for is hosting media for my network as well as running a Plex server.

Do you think it would be worth my while to use FreeNAS on it instead of Windows Server 2012?
I like that FreeNAS just runs from a USB drive and has the data checking, scrubbing and snapshots.
 
I have been spending some time playing with FreeNAS and WSE 2012R2.

Just some thoughts:

1. FreeNAS does not need much in the way of CPU power. My box is built on a single Xeon 1230V3 and 32G ram. And the cpu is total overkill. I am willing to be I could do just fine with Avoton or maybe even an I3 that supported ecc.

2. WSE 2012 has some nice features like multichannel SMB which is really really nice if your only running 1G ethernet. WSE also feels snappier when browsing shares.

3. I feel much safer using two 6 disk raid z2 volumes over going with a single 12 disk two way mirror in Storage Spaces.

4. REFS can only be used with mirror spaces it cant be used with parity spaces. Also, parity spaces is unholy slow, I mean so slow I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

5. Power use seems about equal. Neither seems to be able to spin down disks that are idle (this could also just be my lack of computer savvy).

6. I cant speak to using FreeNAS as a plex server. That might be a big advantage for Server. You might even be able to get more out of it if you use it and Vmware Workstation.

Right now I have decided on FreeNAS but may reevaluate once the Server version of Win9 becomes available.
 
Well, I'm fumbling my way through the FreeNAS configuration now. If I decide I don't like it, I can just pull the USB drive and it will boot back into Win Server 2012 from it's SSD.
 
I love ZFS and FreeNAS is a great front end for it.

As others have mentioned, your CPU's are total overkill for freenas. My system has dual L5640's (2.27 GHz) and I have forwarded 6 cores to Freenas. Never seen the load go above 50%.

Consider putting ESXi on there and virtualize, using the rest of the cores for other stuff!

Keep in mind ZFS and FreeNAS LOVES RAM. For any RAIDz configuration consider 2GB + 1GB per TB of storage your absolute minimum.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041107400 said:
For any RAIDz configuration consider 2GB + 1GB per TB of storage your absolute minimum.
Click to expand...

I have had quite large Solaris setups in the past with 2 GB RAM. This is enough for a stable system when not using dedup - independent from storage size. The RAM above is used as RAM readcache.

If pure disk speed is enough, you do not need more RAM. If you need performance in some workloads, you may need much more RAM than 1 GB per TB storage (Can be 128 GB RAM on a 10 TB SSD Storage) . So this static rule is no more than a rule of thumb for an average professional storage system - not the absolute minimum.
 
I know my CPU's are overkill. It's just what I have available. It was overkill as a file server running Server 2012, also.

I didn't realize that I'd lose drive data going from NTFS to ZFS (Although, I should have), so I've been playing Disk swap all day copying files to other drives so I can turn the originals into ZFS and then copying them back.

Slow process, but looks like it'll turn out just fine.
 
TheGamerZ said:
I know my CPU's are overkill. It's just what I have available. It was overkill as a file server running Server 2012, also.

I didn't realize that I'd lose drive data going from NTFS to ZFS (Although, I should have), so I've been playing Disk swap all day copying files to other drives so I can turn the originals into ZFS and then copying them back.

Slow process, but looks like it'll turn out just fine.
Click to expand...

How many disks have you got? These days with RAID5/RAIDz being risky due to drive sizes, I recommend starting with 6 disks in RAIDz2, which is the ZFS equivalent of RAID6.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041107934 said:
How many disks have you got? These days with RAID5/RAIDz being risky due to drive sizes, I recommend starting with 6 disks in RAIDz2, which is the ZFS equivalent of RAID6.
Click to expand...

Also I should note that I disagree with the author of that article when it comes to the future of RAID6. Since ZFS dynamically reconstructs bad data from parity, as long as you have at least one parity drive left, you don't need to worry, unless your second parity drive fails before a rebuild completes.
 
Franko said:
2. WSE 2012 has some nice features like multichannel SMB which is really really nice if your only running 1G ethernet. WSE also feels snappier when browsing shares.

3. I feel much safer using two 6 disk raid z2 volumes over going with a single 12 disk two way mirror in Storage Spaces.

4. REFS can only be used with mirror spaces it cant be used with parity spaces. Also, parity spaces is unholy slow, I mean so slow I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

5. Power use seems about equal. Neither seems to be able to spin down disks that are idle (this could also just be my lack of computer savvy).
Click to expand...
  • #2: Agreed
  • #3: Both are wasteful of space. You haven't mentioned other RAID options using either SS or HW RAID cards that are not really supported under FreeNAS.
  • #4: Incorrect, it only is supported with Server 2012R2. REFS works on all forms of StorageSpaces and has no write penalty either. I have some doubts on your understanding of Win Server.

TheGamerZ said:
System is as follows:

CPUs: 2 x Xeon E5450
Mobo: Superemicro X7DVL-3
RAM: 16gb of ECC DDR2 PC2-5300
Storage: HGST 4TB & (2)Samsung 2TB
Click to expand...
The RAM is known as FBDIMM.
The hardware list here is best suited for use as a more powerful serving environment and way overkill for what you are wanting to do.
If you wanted to put it to use then I would suggest Server 2012R2 and install the HyperV and use it to host other machines that maybe useful (Torrent/P2P machine, exchange or the likes). 16GB is a little limited for either when you really get a taste of what is needed. Both FN and WinServer like plenty of RAM, especially with StorageSpaces and disk-writing.

TheGamerZ said:
I didn't realize that I'd lose drive data going from NTFS to ZFS
Click to expand...
:confused: That one is pretty obvious buddy.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041107934 said:
How many disks have you got?
Click to expand...

Clearly stated in first post: 1 x 4tb, 2 x 2tb = 3 drives total

Lost-Benji said:
The RAM is known as FBDIMM.
Click to expand...

I'm aware

Lost-Benji said:
The hardware list here is best suited for use as a more powerful serving environment and way overkill for what you are wanting to do.
If you wanted to put it to use then I would suggest Server 2012R2 and install the HyperV and use it to host other machines that maybe useful (Torrent/P2P machine, exchange or the likes).
Click to expand...

I know it's overkill. It's not like I went out and bought all that hardware just to serve files. It's just the stuff I have around. I don't need any other virtualized machines running. I just need something to reliably host media to my various devices. And since my machine travels with me to LANs frequently, I can't use mine.


Lost-Benji said:
:confused: That one is pretty obvious buddy.
Click to expand...

Which is why I said "although I should have"
 
TheGamerZ said:
Clearly stated in first post: 1 x 4tb, 2 x 2tb = 3 drives total
Click to expand...

Saw that, but are you planning on adding any others?

If you want any kind of redundancy on those, you are going to wind up losing a lot of useable space.

For instance, lets say you do a small 3 disk RAIDz (RAID5) vdev, first off, it is going to treat all the drives as if they were the smallest drive in the member set, and then you lose the capacity of one drive.

So out of your 8TB in raw disk space, you'd wind up with 2*2, 4TB of useable space (and less once you account for the 1000 vs 1024 conversion...

To understand how ZFS does things, you have a pool, that can include one or more vdevs. If any vdev in a pool is lost, the entire pool is lost.

Each vdev can be created in multiple ways (RAIDz=one parity drive, RAIDz2 = two parity drives, RAIDz3 = trhee parity drives, mirror, stripe (not recommended) or standalone drive (not recommended)

The only way to grow an individual vdev, is by replacing drives in it with bigger drives one by one, and allowing it to rebuild. You can not grow a vdev by adding more drives later.

Once a vdev is created - however - you can grow the overall pool, by adding more vdevs to it.

In my case, I have a 12 disk pool, consisting of two 6 disk RAIDz2 vdevs, as an example.

I guess what I am trying to convey is that your current drives are not ideal as far as space efficiency goes for ZFS use, and whatever you select up front, you are semi-stuck with unless you want to backup, break up the pool, and recreate it.

Honestly, if you value your data, you'll want at least RAIDz2 or mirrors.

You can start RAIDz2 vdevs as small as 4 drives, but then since you are losing two to parity, they are no more efficient than a mirror. You could do 5, but it is inefficient performance wise. The best place to start when it comes to RAIDz2 is 6 drives.
 
Lost-Benji said:
  • #2: Agreed
  • #3: Both are wasteful of space. You haven't mentioned other RAID options using either SS or HW RAID cards that are not really supported under FreeNAS.
  • #4: Incorrect, it only is supported with Server 2012R2. REFS works on all forms of StorageSpaces and has no write penalty either. I have some doubts on your understanding of Win Server.


Just to confirm storage spaces does do refs related data integrity scanning on parity spaces? I am asking because I was under the impression that bitrot could only be detected on mirror spaces.

P.S. yes my knowledge is low its why I am using WSE as a souped up replacement for the now dead windows home server.
Click to expand...
 
kenned3 said:
Be sure to read the threads where they advise you do NOT virtualize it....

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.12714/

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...duction-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/#post58364
Click to expand...

Yep, and they are dead wrong.

Their argument goes something like this:

"Don't virtualize because you might be tempted to do something stupid (like use image files as disks, or underprovision RAM, or something like that)".

Essentially they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There are many (MANY) users who virtualize FreeNAS, Napp-IT and many other flavors of ZFS storage appliances.

Just give it enough RAM, and make sure your drives are connected to a storage controller like an IBM M1015 crossflashed to IT mode that can be reliably direct I/O forwarded to your FreeNAS guest using IOMMU/VT-d
 
I know a lot of people state that most mid-to-high end processors are overkill for the function of FreNAS itself, but what about the function of Plex Media Server? Has anyone found the processor usage better or worse than running on a Windows or *nix machine? The transcoding process for some files can get pretty hot and heavy, and Plex (besides my other computers' Acronis images) is pretty much my server's reason for existing.
 
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