[clue] clue Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5

[Paul B]

I have been using FreeNAS 8 for about 6 months, and I like it a great
deal.  I have it running backups and rsync from multiple OS and I can
verify that the current version with updated Netatalk packages runs time
machine for Lion machines without issue.  I also have it sharing out an
itunes library and running multiple automated snapshots.  My primary
attraction was OS interoperability as a backup solution.  For the data that
is backed up from this device I map the volume using a separate pc and burn
multiple BD-Rs.

At first I used it with a 3ware 9650SE which will worked well, but I
discovered that RAIDZ  using the regular SATA II plugs on the board gave me
more than enough performance.   I am using a Core 2 Quad Q9550 and a
SuperMicro MBD-X7SBL-LN1-O with 8Gb memory.  When you use ZFS and if you
read the details on FreeNAS.org you will see that you need a lot of memory
even though the processor usage is fairly low.  My system stays with at
least 6GB allocated at all times.  Thus far I have had to add/remove
physical drives once, and it was fairly easy.  I like the idea that I'm not
dependent on a 3ware card to recover if for some reason the card fails
rather than drives.  Also I did put the FreeNAS OS on a microcenter 2GB
thumbdrive.  The beauty of this is you can completely reinstall, and
reconnect to your volumes without having to touch the main disks.  I've
done this 3 times (due to starting out with a beta version and updating)
and every time was easy.

FreeNAS will let you either set the card to JBOD and use all the drives in
RAIDZ or you can present the whole raid volume to it and have it run on
that.  I use it only for data storage and FTP.  You can also create a
vmware datastore or iscsi target, or simply map a volume to a linux box,
but I did not use these features.




>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 10:40:19 -0800
> From: Yaverot <Yaverot at computermail.net>
> Subject: Re: [clue] File Server - URAID or FREENAS
> To: "Tom Martin" <toms_jeep at yahoo.com>, "CLUE's mailing list"
>        <clue at cluedenver.org>
> Message-ID: <20120301104019.A88039E6 at m0005297.ppops.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
>
> --- toms_jeep at yahoo.com wrote:
>
> I am looking to set up a file server at home, I have narrowed my search
> down to UNRAID or FREENAS. I have tryed UNRAID but it did not work with the
> 3WARE raid card that is installed in the server.
> Server Details;
> Intel MB- Xeon quad core, 3WARE 12 port card, 12 500GB SATA drives
> currently set at Raid 50. I would like to set one up with UNRAID and one
> with FREENAS but did not want to spend the $$$ on a new Raid card if it
> would not be worth it.
>
> --- yaverot replies:
> In trying to figure out which questions to ask you, I'm trying to figure
> out which issues you have.  So my questions will be more disjointed than
> normal.
>
> unRAID (lime-technology.com) or FreeNAS -> What features attracted you to
> these options, which options have you ruled out?
>
> didn't work with current RAID card -> Does the card provide _any_ drives
> to the OS? (Driver issue) Is it set as JBOD for the OS to do RAIDing (each
> drive seen separately), or is it hardware/firmware RAID (OS sees one drive
> that is actually all disks)?  Which do you want?
>
> set up one with ... and one with -> Do you have multiple servers, or
> intend multiple servers, or am I misinterpreting this?
>
> Is/will it only be a file server, or will it be doing other things
> (bittorrent, email)?
> How much RAM does/will it have?
>
> And a question I'm failing myself: Once consolidated to the main server,
> how will you be backing that up? (Actually I do have an answer with how, I
> don't have a target system or a physical where for it.)
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> End of clue Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5
> ***********************************
>
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