Thought my mind was made up...

holzmann

Weaksauce
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Jan 20, 2011
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I thought I knew what I wanted in a home file server until I read Anand's recent file server "guide" if you can call it that.

I had decided on FreeNAS. I use it now and like it. I will probably stick with FreeNAS. The Anand article leans heavily in favor of WHS...

My current file server contains 2x 500GB HDDs in hardware RAID 1. I currently am using 400GBs of that space. The server mostly contains music and photos and some MKV videos. I am not the type who rips his DVD/BR collection but I do shoot with a Canon 5DII and download TOP GEAR: UK in 720p, etc.

What do I want in a home file server?
-Read/write speed. (I know this also comes with having ideal NICs, cabling, routers, switches, etc.)
-Redundancy/safety. The file server should contain its own degree of fail-safe.
-Ability to stay up for months on end.
-Ability for local Windows7 machines to connect automatically without extra logins. -Ability to use file server directories as library directories in Win7.
-Prefer not to have an insane level of complexity.

So with these factors in mind, my thought was to just build another RAID 1 file server using 2x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives. Instead of hardware RAID via a PCI card, the HDDs would be connected to the motherboard and FreeNAS would do the rest. I guess this is called software RAID?

I guess my questions now involve RAID 1 vs. RAID 5. The latter seems quite "in" these days. What would be the benefits of RAID 5 over 1? What would you recommend for my situation?

Another question I have is in regards to ZFS. What benefits with this file system give me over say NTFS or even FAT32? What is the difference between RAIDZ and ZFS?

Finally, SAMBA vs. NFS? What are the pros and cons of using NFS over SAMBA? I am aware that Win7 Ultimate supports NFS; I do have access to (legit) copies of Win7U.

Thanks for your help!
 
So with these factors in mind, my thought was to just build another RAID 1 file server using 2x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives. Instead of hardware RAID via a PCI card, the HDDs would be connected to the motherboard and FreeNAS would do the rest. I guess this is called software RAID?
Yes
I guess my questions now involve RAID 1 vs. RAID 5. The latter seems quite "in" these days. What would be the benefits of RAID 5 over 1? What would you recommend for my situation?
RAID 5 would net you more storage space and generally higher performance. However do note that you need three hard drives minimum for RAID 5.
Another question I have is in regards to ZFS. What benefits with this file system give me over say NTFS or even FAT32? What is the difference between RAIDZ and ZFS?
You should read this:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036644362&postcount=2
 
Thanks for the reply.

Your link references ZFSguru, but I assum the latest version of FreeNAS is just as capable in terms of handling ZFS?

Edit: NM! I continued reading...
 
The Anantech guide will do one of two things in general:

1) Make people that have a small clue about computers think they actually know something and then proceed to do sometihng completely stupid. Six months later we will see posts saying "my server is borked".

2) Make people that have a small clue about computers start posting tons of annoying questions that have been answered time and time again. They will proceed to ignore the advice and six months later post "my server is borked".

..................

However, there will be a small minority that will see the guide as starting point of doing research to ask intelligent questions and then use that data to make an informed and wise decision. I'm hoping the Op is part of the small minority.
 
Well, I want to be in that minority!

I think my plan now is to use FreeNAS to build a pool of mirrored ZFS drives. The question now becomes how many HDDs to buy? My plan called for 2x 2TB. Fine for a mirrored solution. Not sure I want to mess with parity drives.

Once the file server is up and running, I will then install Client for NFS on Win7 Ultimate and use NFS instead of SAMBA for shares.

How does this sound?

Another thing: why do people use virtual machines for this kind of work? This totally puzzles me.
 
Well, I want to be in that minority!

I think my plan now is to use FreeNAS to build a pool of mirrored ZFS drives. The question now becomes how many HDDs to buy? My plan called for 2x 2TB. Fine for a mirrored solution. Not sure I want to mess with parity drives.

Once the file server is up and running, I will then install Client for NFS on Win7 Ultimate and use NFS instead of SAMBA for shares.

How does this sound?

Another thing: why do people use virtual machines for this kind of work? This totally puzzles me.

I have one major issue with RAID 1...poor utilization that is HW dependant. WHS may be poor utilizaiton as well, but at least I can walk the drives to somewhere else and get a large feature set for little $.

also...parity drives are not "scary".
 
First : do you make backups ?

Second : since you don't seem to need much space, ZFS seems overkill.

RAID5 needs expensive hardware to get performance, so I wouldn't recommend it either.
 
Well, I want to be in that minority!

I think my plan now is to use FreeNAS to build a pool of mirrored ZFS drives. The question now becomes how many HDDs to buy? My plan called for 2x 2TB. Fine for a mirrored solution. Not sure I want to mess with parity drives.
If 2TB of storage will be enough to meet your needs for the next year or so, then a simple RAID 1 array will do. However, if you see yourself expanding well past that 2TB, then get three hard drives for a RAID 5 array. That'll net you 4TB of space.


Once the file server is up and running, I will then install Client for NFS on Win7 Ultimate and use NFS instead of SAMBA for shares.

How does this sound?
Sounds good.
Another thing: why do people use virtual machines for this kind of work? This totally puzzles me.
Several reasons really:
- Some people have really powerful servers/PC and don't want to spend money on buying another server totally dedicated towards file serving. Virtualizing the server allows them to take advantage of the performance of their server/PC as well being to able to have other VMs installed.

- Some people tend to try out multiple storage OSes at the same time to try to find which one works best for them or just to have multiple ways of storing their more vital data.

- Portability: You can move the storage OS VM to another system usually without issue if you need to like in the case of a PC/Server upgrade or if the PC/server dies.
RAID5 needs expensive hardware to get performance, so I wouldn't recommend it either.
Not expensive if you're using software RAID and a non-windows OS.
 
To answer a few questions...

Do I make backups? Foolishly, no. I should. I just bet that drive redundancy is enough.

Is 2TB enough? 500GB has been enough for about 2-3 years I would say. A 400% increase should last me another 2-3 years easily.

Virtual Machines/Portability: Still confused here. So, let's say I have a PC with ONE 3TB HDD. Or would have multiple HDDs? I would then install a virtual OS? And then within this one virtual OS, a virtual server that uses the ONE HDD? Or several? My mind is blown by this. Need more information/taken through the steps.

ZFS? I am impressed with what I have read so far. As long as the machine has enough RAM (4-8GB) then why not? Especially since I do not do regular backups, ZFS could add peace of mind.
 
Do I make backups? Foolishly, no. I should. I just bet that drive redundancy is enough.
Unfortunately it isn't enough these days.
Virtual Machines/Portability: Still confused here. So, let's say I have a PC with ONE 3TB HDD. Or would have multiple HDDs? I would then install a virtual OS? And then within this one virtual OS, a virtual server that uses the ONE HDD? Or several? My mind is blown by this. Need more information/taken through the steps.
Just read this FAQ:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1366895

But yes, you basically have one OS hosting VMs of other OSes. You use those VM OSes to run all sorts of applications or servers.
 
I think FreeNAS with RAID 5 will give you good performance, even if it's software RAID.

With software encryption and software RAID on three 7200 RPM drives with an old AMD Athlon 5000 system, I can get ~50 MByte/s writes. Better for reads. You'll need a PCI-e Gigabit NIC for that, however (PCI NICs max out at about 200 Mbits/second, or 25 Megabytes/second). 100 Mbit Ethernet has a limit of about 11-12 Megabytes/second.

Someone taught me a very important lesson on backups and RAID. RAID isn't a backup. RAID is RAID. Get one of those inexpensive laptop drives from Best Buy or wherever (1 TB can be found for about $100 now). They're small, portable, and easily stored away. Buy two, and you've got a decent backup system for that large amount of data.


To give a bit of perspective, your 5DMKII can record video at a 38 Mbit/second stream, which is about 5 MB/s.
 
Do I make backups? Foolishly, no. I should. I just bet that drive redundancy is enough.

You really need to have an offline backup solution, even if it is just a single HDD.

RAID /= backup

If your array fails and you lose everything, you will wish you had a backup.
Recovery may be possible, but it is so much easier to have a backup to restore from.

At a minimum, you should run a hotspare or two, in case of a failure.
 
You really need to have an offline backup solution, even if it is just a single HDD.

RAID /= backup

If your array fails...

I never understood this when in reference to Raid 1 arrays.

If the array fails, you have two drives with perfect data.

If a drive fails, you have a second drive with backed up data.

What's the difference between having a NAS that backs up to an external source vs a simple RAID 1 NAS? To me, I don't see a difference in home use. Unless there's a fire or electrical issue which destroys the drives, I don't see why everyone makes a huge deal out of backing up a RAID1 array.
 
A RAID controller can go bad. Anything that happens to a file happens to its copy (virus, screw up, etc.). Among other things.

But at least RAID1 is uncomplicated, and thus on top of an offline backup, I would advise the OP to stay with that, RAID5 and ZFS are overkill in my opinion (and not recommended when you don't understand the basics).

Not expensive if you're using software RAID and a non-windows OS.

You were saying : "RAID 5 would net you more storage space and generally higher performance".

Software RAID5 will not get him better performance than RAID1.
 
I never understood this when in reference to Raid 1 arrays.

If the array fails, you have two drives with perfect data.

If a drive fails, you have a second drive with backed up data.

What's the difference between having a NAS that backs up to an external source vs a simple RAID 1 NAS? To me, I don't see a difference in home use. Unless there's a fire or electrical issue which destroys the drives, I don't see why everyone makes a huge deal out of backing up a RAID1 array.

If your RAID controller decides to malfunction during a write, even with RAID1, it can take all of the data with it by destroying the data unknowingly.

Also, if there is a power surge and your array and/or disks are knocked out, it doesn't matter how many disks you have if they are fried. Offsite and offline backups are necessary. RAID /= backup.
 
Software RAID5 will not get him better performance than RAID1.

It will on a non-windows OS. However on windows I agree software and fake raid 5/6 are pathetic. Also if the storage is on an external server instead of his windows machine he will have better performance having the disks locally in raid1 using mobo ports when you consider network latency and bandwidth limitations.
 
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For this little amount of storage. I would just make backups to an external disk that is only on when the backups are made.
 
You were saying : "RAID 5 would net you more storage space and generally higher performance".

Software RAID5 will not get him better performance than RAID1.

As long as it it a Linux or Unix-based software RAID, yes it will net more performance in RAID5 than RAID1.

MDADM has very high performance and limited only by your hardware, and I would consider it to only be slightly below ZFS in terms of performance.

RAID5 will always be faster than RAID1, unless one uses Windows-software RAID, then performance will be lost all together.
 
Despite the fact that RAID is "built into" ZFS, I assume you still need two physical drives for actual hardware redundancy?
 
Despite the fact that RAID is "built into" ZFS, I assume you still need two physical drives for actual hardware redundancy?

Yes. You need at minimum 2 drives for hardware redundancy.
 
I think I have made my mind up again, thanks to the input here.

What I want to do now is build a FreeNAS/ZFS/NFS system on the following hardware:

Mobo: ASUS M4A88T-M LE AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX (ECC Support)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core (ECC Support)
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory
Intel EXPI9301CT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Desktop Adapter Gigabit CT
Patriot Xporter XT Boost 4GB Flash Drive (for the OS)

2x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard (for RAID 1)

Edit: I will also maintain an external 500Gb drive for critical backups.
 
Every time someone mentions raid there is someone that says
RAID /= backup

I dont really understand why this is such a big deal.
Having a harddrive offline with a backup doesnt mean it will never die.
Plugging it in and out every now and then could sure kill it eventually.
To me it sounds as safe as a backup on a raid6 array.

And i bet theres plenty of ppl here keeping their backups on a raid6 array
as i have done myself for years.

I just think ppl should not be so afraid to have a backup on a raid array.
I mean if you have a website to backup. 1 copy.
Then put a copy of that on a raid6 array. 2nd copy.

There has to be a 4 drive failure atleast before you loose that website data.
Probability of that i dont think is very high.
So my tought is go ahead and use raid for backing up your data.
Far more safe than having it on a single external.
It can die anytime just as the drive in a raid (where your data will be safe anyway)
 
I think I have made my mind up again, thanks to the input here.

What I want to do now is build a FreeNAS/ZFS/NFS system on the following hardware:

Mobo: ASUS M4A88T-M LE AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX (ECC Support)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core (ECC Support)
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory
Intel EXPI9301CT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Desktop Adapter Gigabit CT
Patriot Xporter XT Boost 4GB Flash Drive (for the OS)

2x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard (for RAID 1)

Edit: I will also maintain an external 500Gb drive for critical backups.

i cannot comment about FreeNas, but with ZFS i would avoid the Samsung 4k drives
and use the 512b Hitachis

For Storage use it might be better to have some additional 4x or 8x Pci-e slots
I would also prefer a board with IPMI remote management and Intel NICs onboard

My preferred cheaper boards are the boards from Supermicro (X8..-F and X9..-F)
with X58 or 3420/202/204 Intel server chipsets. They should work with FreeNAS
and also well with Solaris* if you optionally want to try/switch to newer ZFS features
from Oracle or OpenIndiana. (but if you want to try these options, 4GB boot drive is not enough,
you need at least 10-16 GB, especially with the easy to use full GUI options like OI/SE11 live,
- i would use more also more to use bootable ZFS-OS snapshots )

These Intel serverboards are more open to ZFS alternatives and for virtualization with VMware
and other future enhancements - evem with a dual core Xeon (enough for a NAS if you do not need
encryption and dedup, especially if you intend to use Raid-1
 
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Every time someone mentions raid there is someone that says
RAID /= backup

I dont really understand why this is such a big deal.
Having a harddrive offline with a backup doesnt mean it will never die.
Plugging it in and out every now and then could sure kill it eventually.
To me it sounds as safe as a backup on a raid6 array.

While true in a sense, it is not correct. If I have a revolver with one bullet and I pull the trigger once versus 6 times...which one has the high probability of shooting? The point of a true back-up is to have statiscally indepdant enough version as possible to minimize the probability of losing all data. To use the same analogy again...if I have one bullet in two revolvers, the chance of both of them going off is 1 in 36...versus having 2 bullets in one revolver make the chance ~1/3.

A version copied on something else, will not be affected if one copy is erased and corrupted (your example). A version that is not powered (plugged in) cannot be damaged by an electical event. A version stored in another location cannot be affected by any form of fire/explosion. A version stored in area of the country will not be affected by an enviromental effect. It is all about mitigating risk. You have no idea how many 1000's of companies were crippled (world wide) by the earthquake in Japan because they did not risk mitigate properly.

And i bet theres plenty of ppl here keeping their backups on a raid6 array as i have done myself for years.

While they are one step above nothing...it is still close enough to it.

I just think ppl should not be so afraid to have a backup on a raid array. I mean if you have a website to backup. 1 copy.Then put a copy of that on a raid6 array. 2nd copy.

And...I can find a ton of threads here about people who did exactly that and lost EVERYTHING. Arrays do fail....PERIOD. Since the RAID card itself is not redundant you have a single point of "I will fuck up all your data". Furthermore, unless you spend a ton of money on "enterprise class HW" to really get the chance down...it is often, by far, cheaper to just making a seperate copy.

There has to be a 4 drive failure atleast before you loose that website data.
Probability of that i dont think is very high.
So my tought is go ahead and use raid for backing up your data.
Far more safe than having it on a single external.
It can die anytime just as the drive in a raid (where your data will be safe anyway)

Wrong on your math. It is a still a 3 drive failure with RAID 6...not 4. If any three drives die, the data is GONE regardless if you have 1 or 5000 copies. The reason why a lot of people go with RAID 6 on larger arrays is two fold.

1) If any single drive fails, the array will most likely rebuild even if a URE occurs on one of the drives.

2) When dealing with large arrays of drives, if there is a mechanical issue with the drives, it will more than likely be systemic and thus more of the drives are at risk. It gives a larger window of time to deal with the issue.

I understand your thought process...but it is one of "personal experience" and not "stastical fact".
 
raid vs backup

in more than 20 years i have lost a lot of RAID systems mostly due to

- failure of power supply - all drives were dead
- failures of (expensive and single) hardware Controllers
- hardware/ memory failures
- second disk failure during rebuild of Raid-5
- silent data errors (when i discovered, it was too late)
- my failure (copy empty mirror over data mirror)
- my failue (delete/modify data without having snaps of former state)

since i use ZFS with at least double redundancy (3 way mirror or Raid-Z3)
and lots of snapshots and regular online scrubbing to repait silent data failures in time
i have not had any data lost due to Raid problems in the last years

my conclusion:
I always need a separate backup (prever disk based) for critical data but there is a
huge difference of availability/ data-security just based on file systems/ Raid-levels and snaps -
there are ultra robust ones like ZFS and ultra unsecure ones like FAT with others are between
 
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i cannot comment about FreeNas, but with ZFS i would avoid the Samsung 4k drives
and use the 512b Hitachis

For Storage use it might be better to have some additional 4x or 8x Pci-e slots
I would also prefer a board with IPMI remote management and Intel NICs onboard

My preferred cheaper boards are the boards from Supermicro (X8..-F and X9..-F)
with X58 or 3420/202/204 Intel server chipsets. They should work with FreeNAS
and also well with Solaris* if you optionally want to try/switch to newer ZFS features
from Oracle or OpenIndiana. (but if you want to try these options, 4GB boot drive is not enough,
you need at least 10-16 GB, especially with the easy to use full GUI options like OI/SE11 live,
- i would use more also more to use bootable ZFS-OS snapshots )

These Intel serverboards are more open to ZFS alternatives and for virtualization with VMware
and other future enhancements - evem with a dual core Xeon (enough for a NAS if you do not need
encryption and dedup, especially if you intend to use Raid-1

Holy crap!

Anyone else think this is overkill for a home file server? I do have a budget...
 
Anyone else think this is overkill for a home file server? I do have a budget...

Not at all, in fact, if I could afford it, the system in my sig would be much more robust, and I'm not even running a system with ZFS.
ZFS is not just a simple file server, it requires some decent hardware to back it up, not to mention any other services which many people run.

Lots of people do more than just run a Samba file server. ;)
 
It depends on if you are upgrading or doing a scratch built. For my all in one, I needed to replace only the mobo, cpu and ram. That ran me about $600 or so. Not that bad, I think?
 
Holy crap!

Anyone else think this is overkill for a home file server? I do have a budget...

we talk about 50-100,-- euro for a backup disk or a better mainboard.
my opinion about: if you buy too cheap, you buy twice and the importance of data is recognized only if they are lost.
or you must define/restrict your need exactly - mostly i can't
 
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Holy crap!

Anyone else think this is overkill for a home file server? I do have a budget...

Having data backups is like insurance. You think it is a waste until you need it. If you don't have it...you go through the 7 stages of grief when bad things do happen.

At the very least, keep an offline backup on a HDD is a USB enclosure..and do it once a month. Spend a little time with a free program like "syncback" and a lot of issues go away. This works well if you get a few TB of data (movies, etc). Honestly, I don't know many people (except for people who record a lot of video of their kids) that have TB's of "critical data".

If you have a reasonable amount of "critical data" (like school work, taxes, etc), that can easily be supported by something like the cheapest crashplan package (10GB) for just a few dollars per year. In my 36 years of life...I have many 20GB of "real data".
 
FYI...if you noticed, there is now a thread about a failed RAID 5 array and my guess is the OP will lose data. RAID6 goes a long ways to reducing risk...but a good RAID6 card with 8 drives isn't cheap either and still suffers from the same overall issue of being a single point of failure.
 
FYI...if you noticed, there is now a thread about a failed RAID 5 array and my guess is the OP will lose data. RAID6 goes a long ways to reducing risk...but a good RAID6 card with 8 drives isn't cheap either and still suffers from the same overall issue of being a single point of failure.

This is why software RAID, hotspares, and/or ZFS is used. ;)
 
RAID, and especially hotspares, are not for redundancy or safety of data, but availability.

It sounds to me like the OP isn't too concerned about having his data unavailable for a few hours in the event of a disk/system failure.

To be honest, why not just use a single disk in your server, and then buy an external enclosure for your second disk, then, once a week or month or whatever makes you feel comfortable, plug it in and make a backup. Run out of space? Well, just buy a second/larger disk.

It's almost free, and the only thing you lose compared to the more elaborate solutions, is availability, or uptime if you will.

Don't get me wrong, RAID and ZFS are awesome techs and I've used RAID for years and intend to use ZFS for future projects, but I just don't see the added benefit in your scenario.

-Read/write speed. (I know this also comes with having ideal NICs, cabling, routers, switches, etc.)
Check. You're limited to Gbit speeds, most current generation drives are able to saturate this interface, especially if you're not using Intel NICs.
-Redundancy/safety. The file server should contain its own degree of fail-safe.
Almost fulfilled with my proposed setup. The data will not be available in the event of a disk failure until you restore it (which is as simple as plugging in the backup disk). Remember, though, that harddrives is not the only hardware that can fail, so to be truely redundant, you would need much more elaborate setups than what's been suggested so far in this thread.
-Ability to stay up for months on end.
See above.
-Ability for local Windows7 machines to connect automatically without extra logins. -Ability to use file server directories as library directories in Win7.
Most OS's should be able to facilitate this demand. In any case, it is not relevant regarding your decision about the disk subsystem.
-Prefer not to have an insane level of complexity.
This is by far the least complex way to achieve backup of your data, obviously.
 
RAID, and especially hotspares, are not for redundancy or safety of data, but availability.
How about RAID 50 or 60? ;)

Yeah, I agree with you, it really is just meant as uptime insurance, but at that point, ZFS should probably be used if a large disk array is used.
 
RAID50 and 60 aren't for redundancy or safety either, they're for speed.

When determining your need for uptime or robustness of a disk subsystem to determine to RAID level needed, you only look at the minimum amount of drives that can fail before your RAID goes offline, and in this regard, RAID50 and 60 adds nothing compared to their unnested brethren.
 
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