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-1 for Top-Posting .. but +1 on content .. and LOL thanks for the chuckle! Sometime if you're about for a beer/other-beverage, we'll have to meet up sometime mr meowski :D Cheers, MJE On 17/04/17 23:11, mr meowski via list wrote: > On 17/04/17 21:32, Daniel Robinson via list wrote: >> Hello folks, >> >> Just wondering if somebody would be so kind as to tell me my RAID >> options for my current hardware setup. >> >> I have 2x identical 1TB and 2x identical 500GB stuffed inside a newly >> acquired HP N40L microserver. >> >> In am looking for redundancy and don't require more than 1TB of total >> storage at this present time. >> >> I will be using FreeNAS unless anyone wants to point me back in the >> direction of Linux/Debian. >> >> My guess is I'll need two RAID 1. 2x1tb=1tb 2x500gb=500gb total storage >> of 1.5TB. However, I am very new to ZFS and I might be looking at this >> as though it was the year 2004. (not played with RAID since around that >> time). >> >> Any pointers please? > Hi Daniel - I was just going to take a break from answering DCGLUG > questions for a bit and then you had to pop up and mention the "Z" > thing, which unfortunately I just can't resist... ZFS is my favourite > thing in computing since Linux probably. > > MJE's already given you some great pointers on FreeNAS and he's pretty > spot on, especially regarding the GUI. It nearly completely spoils an > otherwise turnkey appliance unfortunately as I inevitably find myself > configuring things more efficiently and a lot faster at the prompt in > BSD style, only to find out it's completely out-of-sync with all the GUI > stuff. At which point I usually wish I'd just rolled my own with actual > BSD which is what I usually end up doing. FreeNAS is flawed in my > opinion, although if you don't stray outside the GUI much or try and do > anything relatively complicated, it's still not a bad product. > > You should first check this out though: > > https://www.servethehome.com/freenas-corral-canned-development-essentially-halted-now/ > > As ever, nothing is simple as it first seems :[ > > FreeNAS is developed by a company called "iX" and they don't have a > stellar reputation: like the "Electric Fence" company that develops > pfsense, another famous BSD-derived turnkey appliance that functions as > an all-in-one network system they make some questionable calls sometimes > - people have said considerably less charitable things about them > elsewhere too, which I'll leave as an exercise for you to google. BSD of > course is very permissively licensed as compared to the famous GPL which > kind of opens the doors for various abuses. Both iX and Electric Fence > have been panned mercilessly for playing fast and loose with licensing, > copyright assignments and stiffing user communities over the years - > ultimately they are for-profit companies that want you to upgrade from > their free versions to paid flagship products. Make of that what you > will: neither pfsense or FreeNAS are useless by any means but all that > glitters is not gold. I personally keep retesting both again and again > over the years, only to remember why I either roll my own, pay > considerably more for enterprise products from different vendors when > appropriate or look for other free equivalents that aren't run by scumbags. > > This probably isn't the kind of information you wanted to be fair, but I > feel it would be a bit remiss not to warn you. I know I'm an annoying as > hell know-it-all sometimes but I really have a *lot* of painful > experience in this specific area. On that note, I'm going to annoy you > even more by saying that I really, *really* don't like HP Microservers > one little bit either and I've dealt with god knows how many of them. I > used to work for a couple of companies that actually resold them > packaged with amongst other things FreeNAS and pfsense so I really do > have the scars to show for it. But now I feel really bad so time to be a > bit more positive. > > There's no reason why your Microserver N40L can't and won't be a really > fun little toy to play with and even a perfectly functional little NAS > box for actual fileserving duties - don't let my sour grapes put you off! > > Things to bear in mind: they aren't strong systems (there are newer ones > with full UEFIs, multicore Xeons and add-in proper RAID cards that are > surprisingly potent but unfortunately you don't have one of those) so > will never manage much in the way of throughput. The built in RAID > system sucks and you'll be much, much better off disabling it completely > and using either softraid or ZFS functionality to handle the whole > storage stack. The lack of expansion slots isn't helpful either, as is > their tendency to disable or degrade some SATA ports if you fully load > the box and/or use the internal headers to connect devices up - this > varies by model unfortunately so I recommend really reading around to > get the full info. There is a TON of info online about these things > luckily, so read as much as you can on your specific unit. > > What you want to do with it is the most important factor - if you just > want to experiment with it and try loads of different options it's > actually a great little test box but be wary of the common mistake. You > start off with a test instance, it goes well and so you start using it > and then before you know it, suddenly the machine has accidentally been > promoted from testing to production and you can't really tweak or muck > about with it much 'cos it's now your main backup target and fileserver. > Keep all your important stuff elsewhere until you've really, really > settled on your final system for it and then to be fair, you can > probably shove it in a closet and forget about it for a few years and it > will Just Work(TM). The Microservers are genuinely good for that, I > won't knock 'em too hard. > > As to your actual original question, you mostly know what you're doing > and I prefer your approach to MJE's advice to be honest! It's currently > a spare box after all so screw reading the manual (sorry Michael) and > just install whatever you want and play with it until it breaks. Then > wipe it and reinstall again. > > Bearing in mind the limitations I mentioned of degrading SATA > connections with a fully populated box, if you rip out the optical drive > as well as use the internal header you can actually cram two more SATA > disks in there (not full size obviously). The N40L is frankly just too > weak for serious ZFS use - forget 8Gb RAM if you want to use anything > above the most basic features. Flicking on native ZFS compression will > batter performance and the killer feature - dedupe - will instantly > cripple it completely. For more gentle use like a home fileserver if you > do want to use ZFS and I definitely recommend playing with it, it'll be > much, much more usable if you grab one of the spare internal SATAs, > attach a SSD and configure it as a ZIL/L2ARC cache for the zpools. That > unfortunately is somewhat of a dark art that will require a lot benching > and tuning to really bring it to life. This is exactly the sort of thing > your N40L might be pretty fun to muck about with I guess - but I > categorically would NOT use FreeNAS for this. You'd be better off with > straight FreeBSD or even Linux. Most of the better Linux distros have > quite robust ZFS systems available now, including Debian and CentOS. And > Arch, Ubuntu, SuSE... > > Initially you would indeed want to configure 2 x zpools, one out of the > 500Gb disks and one out of the 1Tb disks. You have multiple options even > there, and many, many gotchas to watch out for: ZFS intensely dislikes > the lazy setups that you tend to get "out of the box". You need to watch > for partition sector alignments, ashift values, stride size and types... > all of which can be relentlessly tuned. You can go RAIDZ across two of > the disks to create a RAID1 style mirror, or just make one non-fault > tolerant JBOD style array out of both disks, and then tell ZFS > specifically to keep multiple redundant copies on both platter sets. > Again, all can be mercilessly tweaked and tuned and even slight > misconfigurations can cripple performance instantly. ZFS will also eat > any and all RAM it can get its hands on, and then some. > > Ermm, I'm not exactly selling ZFS here am I? :| > > On that specific hardware I think I'd be tempted to play with everything > and just muck about if I were you. A lot of this stuff is overthinking > it and way too "enterprisey" to care about for a dinky little home > server box. An actual, solid recommendation? I'd stick with Linux to be > honest if I wanted it to be an actual working system rather than just a > test box. > > Specifically, I'd go with Arch (or Debian stable, or CentOS - the > boring, ultra-stable ones) and mdraid, the Linux software > implementation. Don't do the predictable nasty RAID 0 or 1 default > options though, they suck. What you probably want is a RAID10 far2 > layout type across each of your 2x2 disk sets and run the OS from USB > (ugh) or an internal SATA port. Follow Michael's advice to add a second, > bonded network card and whilst you still won't saturate a gigabit link > from non-SSD SATA drives, RAID10-FAR2 will give you normal array write > speeds and very nearly double the usual read speeds of a traditional > RAID setup. That'll happily serve multiple large HD films or similar > workloads which considering the hardware platform it's running on, is > the highest utilisation you're realistically going to get out of it. > Unfortunately that will still be *considerably* slower than a half > decent modern laptop with m2 SSD storage and USB3.1 Gen2/Thunderbolt > connectivity but hey, your N40L is also cheaper than a MacBook Pro or > Dell XPS 13 anyway. Plus you probably don't have a 10G switch to hand > anyway to carry that sort of throughput so whatever. > > Damn it, I really got carried away this time. This was the proverbial > red flag to the bull question I guess, lots of my favourite subjects all > crammed into one! Sorry Daniel, hope some of that will be of some use > and not too... negative in places. Don't get me wrong, a fun toy is a > fun toy and I've got some original RPis still running as production > fileservers here and there off of SD cards for god's sake, and they work > perfectly. It's in my nature to overthink things and type much too long > emails apparently. > > Cheers > >
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