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I'm trying to decide on how to set up a NAS for my ESXi box, and at this point I'm sort of conflicted. On the one hand I can buy either the Netgear ReadyNAS 314, the QNAP TS-421, or make my own Frankenstein setup using FreeNAS and a bunch of disks thrown into a mid-size tower. I like how much neater and easier it is to manage disks with the QNAP and ReadyNAS systems, but a friend brought up a question about portability - if the hardware dies, how likely is it that I will be unable to access my data if I choose to go to another NAS vendor? With the FreeNAS system I'm pretty sure I can get away with putting together another box and chucking in the drives and I'm good to go, but neither he nor I know much about how the 314 or the TS-421 store the data to be able to say with any degree of confidence that I can just move the drives in the event of a hardware failure and be up and running with a minimal amount of effort. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thoughts about an alternative setup?
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Nov 27, 2013 21:48
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Yay! My FreeNAS server is up and running, although I was apparently not comprehending correctly when I installed 4x2TB drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration. I was expecting to have 6TB of usable space, but only have 4TB. I still could have arranged it in a less-optimal configuration to get the 6TB, but I decided the massive redundancy was the better way to go (really don't want to lose any data). I've also got a 4TB external drive coming that I can use as a backup solution, so I'm happy that I don't have to build another server to do backup. Of course, when I do feel the need to expand my storage space I'm going to have to figure out how I want to go about doing it - at present my Frankenstein machine has a paltry 4 SATA ports, so it's maxed out in the number of drives I can shove into it. Friend says I'm getting too far ahead of myself, as 4TB will be more than enough space for a long time to come for me. Even so, I might start pulling together a parts list to make a proper FreeNAS server, so that if/when the money comes available I can do it right. In case anyone is interested I'm using a Core2Duo E8400 CPU, Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L Motherboard, 8GB of DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) RAM, an AMS 4-in-3 Trayless backplane, and a 4GB USB flash drive to run FreeNAS, with 4x2TB Seagate NAS drives. The drives were, without a doubt, the most expensive part of the server and made up about 80% of the cost.
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Dec 6, 2013 16:57
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I got that after reading the user's guide half a dozen times, searching the web, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Frustration is a great teacher.
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Dec 6, 2013 17:09
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Yip Yips posted:Cool. Do you have any recommendations? It's a Windows system. SyncToy comes to my mind, but it might be too simplistic for your needs.
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Dec 9, 2013 13:27
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I bought a 4TB Seagate external drive to serve as a backup point for my NAS, but when my roommate and I tried to format the drive using EXT4 I got an error message that I couldn't erase sector 0 and it resulted in a short write and failed out. Anyone have any suggestions on where to find a resolution so I can set up a cron job to back up my FreeNAS server to the external disk?
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Dec 19, 2013 01:44
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I finally got my Linux file server up and running to my satisfaction. It was writing files to my RAID10 partition at about 75MB/sec, so I'm somewhat satisfied with the performance. One of these days I may actually go back and build a proper huge NAS, but I think for at least a year or two my current setup will serve me just fine. I'm curious to see how fast the RAID10 reads now. Time to go do some tests.
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Dec 25, 2013 03:51
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Irritated Goat posted:I have a set up I need some opinions on. When I was flirting with FreeNAS the latest version had Plex built into it as an add-on, however since I've migrated back to using my Linux box as my file server I set up Plex on a Windows 7 VM and installed Plex Server on it. Seems to work just fine for me, so you don't need to install Plex Server on the same machine that you have your files stored on - you just need for both machines to be on the same domain or subnet.
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Jan 5, 2014 16:21
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So I pulled the trigger to buy the components for a NAS box, but I'm still undecided on the OS I will use. I'm going to have a quad-core AMD processor, 8GB of RAM, and 3x1TB WD Reds, plus a dual NIC card so I can play around with NIC teaming. I've been leaning towards FreeNAS and using it as a resource for my VCP5 studying, but I'm sort of wondering if anyone feels that a different OS would be a better choice in regards to storage for an ESXi lab.
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Dec 11, 2014 03:30
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Don Lapre posted:3 1tb drives? do you just have really low storage requirements? I just needed a couple drives so I could set up a lab NAS. I saw no reason to spend several hundred dollars on larger drives and put them through unnecessary wear and tear when my needs are so small at the time (and the only reason I got the WD Reds was because I was actually getting them pretty cheap, plus I liked the idea of a long MTBF).
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Dec 11, 2014 07:00
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I just built a NAS box and installed FreeNAS 9.3 on it. Went with an AMD quad-core processor that was $90, threw it on a Biostar ATX Mobo that was $80, then attached a water cooler system. Only have 8GB of RAM in it, and when I dumped some multi-GB files on the three WD Reds it took forever to write. Think I need to up the RAM to 16GB, see about getting a RAID controller, and adding a few more drives. I'm just using the NAS as part of a lab, so I'm not in any hurry to shell out another $500, but it is something I want to do in another 6 months.
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Dec 24, 2014 05:04
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Don Lapre posted:Are you using all 8gb ram? You probably arn't using 1gb ram. Went with the water cooler for noise reduction - tried an aftermarket cooler I bought originally and then the watercooler. Didn't look back after that. Pretty certain I was using all 8GB of RAM - system reporting was showing that RAM utilization was maxed out, which I'm told is to be expected when using ZFS. Still have room for another 8GB, but I wasn't expecting to want to install it so soon. Not sure if buying a RAID controller would make any difference in Read/Write speeds, but I've always figured (and I may be wrong) that hardware RAID is faster than software RAID. Willing to concede that my experience with RAID controllers is limited, plus I'm not sure if it would even be useful with FreeNAS.
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Dec 24, 2014 09:45
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Mr Shiny Pants posted:You don't want to run ZFS on a RAID controller. The filesystem makes certain assumptions regarding your drives and the way it "talks" to them. A RAID controller will obfuscate the commands ZFS sends to your drive. This could lead to corruption because your RAID controller could cache writes while ZFS thinks everything is consistent and written to disk. In the event of a crash your filesystems may be corrupted. Thanks for the info about the RAID Controller - I was certain there was a reason why one was never mentioned with use in a FreeNAS system. I've had great success so far with the 4x2TB Seagate NAS drives I have in my ESXi box, which are hooked to a RAID Controller. I only bought the WD Reds because they were on sale at the time and I could get the three of them for around $60 each. Since they are for intermediate lab use I'm not too concerned about the performance, but once I finish with my lab I intend to re-purpose the NAS and I'll get much larger disks. The only question then will be get 4TB, 6TB, or 8TB drives? Again, not something that requires an immediate decision, so I can leave it for another time. Pretty sure I will be ordering another 8GB of RAM, however - poo poo's cheap, and it could be very beneficial in the near-term.
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Dec 24, 2014 11:00
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