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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 27th, 2020, 4:39 pm 
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Joined: July 17th, 2016, 6:24 am
Posts: 1099
OK, Roscoe.

I browsed freeNAS site. Few good features in ZFS. But still it doesn't provide any advantage to anyone who can afford a dedicated RAID system.

In my project I am using a pair of All-Flash EMC Unity systems configured to replicate (Oracle Dataguard) between each other. And each system has multiple servers accessing the same shared LUN (Oracle RAC) via multipathed fabric switch.

In this environment, you cannot pay me enough to implement the FreeNAS.

Sure, If I need an larger NAS at home, I will implement a FreeNAS because I am technically saavy to pull it off. IMO, normal folks cannot/should not enter into building FreeNAS.


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 27th, 2020, 4:42 pm 
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Joined: January 15th, 2015, 7:19 am
Posts: 1697
Location: Baltimore MD
Sashi
are you saying you are not normal
can I print that


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 9:40 am 
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Joined: February 28th, 2013, 1:19 pm
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Shashi,

I guess I have to say that putting together a NAS for the purpose of a music file server (with additional functionality) is not like having to be responsible for a file server in a company or datacenter, where reliability and throughput is critical. A home application is pretty lightweight, favoring reads rather than writes (if used as a media server), and it is more important to have data redundancy rather than performance. This is a hobby, and developing a customized solution based on commodity hardware both to save money over a high end commercial NAS solution (sometimes a closed system that does not permit upgrading to current versions of server programs, such as LMS), as well as a good learning experience should not be discouraged. I could argue why should we build our own amplifiers...they might fail and take out our speakers, or burn down our houses, or, in the case of tube amps, zap us with high voltage and kill us. Here, the only risk is that we *might* lose or corrupt data, which is easy to remedy if we maintain proper backups (like a mirrored drive with our data), and rely on the NAS once we have established that it is running reliably. Issues with power glitches can be easily mitigated by use of UPSs. I totally agree that you should not use home-brew NAS for anything that is critical to your livelihood, but doubt if many of use are in that situation.

David


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 11:02 am 
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Joined: June 4th, 2013, 2:39 pm
Posts: 487
I think it's worth distinguishing between a NAS, which is simply a configurable network storage device, and a RAID system, which is considerably more complicated to set up and maintain. I've never worked with FreeNAS but the nice thing about Openmediavault is that, on a basic level, you can combine several drives into one handy box, and also have better operation and more flexibility than a MyCloud or something like that.


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 11:28 am 
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Joined: February 28th, 2013, 1:19 pm
Posts: 914
Grover,

As far as RAID, I think a RAID level 1 is what I had in mind as desirable for reliability, i.e., data mirroring, for a music server. I would want this so that anything I add to the NAS is automatically backed up to a fully redundant drive. It is the simplest method. The other schemes involving striping seem to me to have greater risk.

David


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 11:40 am 
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Both of my FreeNAS servers are setup using RAID-Z2, which uses the ZFS file system setup so that 2 drives can fail simultaneously without data loss. 6x6TB SAS drives in one, 5x4TB SATA drives in the other for nominally 24TB & 12TB available storage.
As far as the difficulty of setting up FreeNAS, it's not much more difficult than a standard Linux install. You do need a small boot drive that's separate from your data drives. The smallest SSD you can find works well, although I did have a problem with one SSD not working with FreeNAS.

Roscoe

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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 1:14 pm 
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Joined: June 4th, 2013, 2:39 pm
Posts: 487
David McGown wrote:
Grover,

As far as RAID, I think a RAID level 1 is what I had in mind as desirable for reliability, i.e., data mirroring, for a music server. I would want this so that anything I add to the NAS is automatically backed up to a fully redundant drive. It is the simplest method. The other schemes involving striping seem to me to have greater risk.

David


That makes perfect sense, David. I just have too much crap I'll never listen to. I should get rid of half of it. Collector-itis--"What if SOMEDAY someone asks for the third take on the second remastering of the earlier version of..." ;-)


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 4:34 pm 
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Joined: July 17th, 2016, 6:24 am
Posts: 1099
David McGown wrote:
Shashi,

I guess I have to say that putting together a NAS for the purpose of a music file server (with additional functionality) is not like having to be responsible for a file server in a company or datacenter, where reliability and throughput is critical. A home application is pretty lightweight, favoring reads rather than writes (if used as a media server), and it is more important to have data redundancy rather than performance. This is a hobby, and developing a customized solution based on commodity hardware both to save money over a high end commercial NAS solution (sometimes a closed system that does not permit upgrading to current versions of server programs, such as LMS), as well as a good learning experience should not be discouraged. I could argue why should we build our own amplifiers...they might fail and take out our speakers, or burn down our houses, or, in the case of tube amps, zap us with high voltage and kill us. Here, the only risk is that we *might* lose or corrupt data, which is easy to remedy if we maintain proper backups (like a mirrored drive with our data), and rely on the NAS once we have established that it is running reliably. Issues with power glitches can be easily mitigated by use of UPSs. I totally agree that you should not use home-brew NAS for anything that is critical to your livelihood, but doubt if many of use are in that situation.

David


David,

While I agree with you 100%, I am addressing two issues.
1. Is the Home Brew NAS right solution for a typical Audiophile?
I say no because most of the people are not informed in the field of computers. To build a how me NAS, one should be very well versed on all the hardware components of a computer and how they work with each other. And more importantly they need have excellent knowledge of Linux and ZFS file system.
A 1 TB music directory is not unusual now-a-days. To back it up periodically, you would need specialized software to do a decent job.
UPS is an additional component in the system.

The point is, FreeNAS might not be a desirable solution to vast majority of end users. Of course, it would be a feast to a geek.

2. FreeNAS as a reliable solution in general. We agree on this point.


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 4:54 pm 
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Joined: July 17th, 2016, 6:24 am
Posts: 1099
David McGown wrote:
Grover,

As far as RAID, I think a RAID level 1 is what I had in mind as desirable for reliability, i.e., data mirroring, for a music server. I would want this so that anything I add to the NAS is automatically backed up to a fully redundant drive. It is the simplest method. The other schemes involving striping seem to me to have greater risk.

David


I would go one step beyond and use RAID 10 (striping + mirroring) with a hot spare if the NAS supports. Striping for customizing the disk size and mirroring redundancy.

Most of the consumer grade NAS's now have a feature of replication, ie, if you have two NAS systems, the primary NAS will replicate itself on the second NAS. Second NAS needs to be online only when the replication kicks in.


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 Post subject: Re: FreeNAS
PostPosted: January 28th, 2020, 7:27 pm 
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Joined: January 15th, 2015, 7:19 am
Posts: 1697
Location: Baltimore MD
I thought we were talking about music files, you guys are kind of going over the top, when for $15/month you could have access to millions of albums on line with no need of backup.
The NAS systems you are talking about cost a lot and are very complex.


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