Free NAS build
AMD FX-4300 (3.8GHz) CPU
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
8GB Kingston DDR3 ECC 1600 CL 9 Hynix ts model B RAM (2x4gb ECC Unbuffered)
4x 2TB HGST 7K3000 HUA723020ALA641 OEM
All wrapped up in aCOOLER MASTER Elite 342 RC-342-KKRJ-GP Black Steel / Plastic MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 400W Power Supply
APC Back-UPS Pro BR1000G
Suggestions for setup ? Raid configuration needed or can I just use BTRFS or ZFS?
Critique hardware...
Motherboard RAID would be the setup unfortunatley unless I got a cheap controller but I do not want to
Need Experienced People to critique a little bit.. its my first time at this... I was originally thinking RAID 6 (2 parity 2 Data drivers until i saw the motherboard controller didnt support it)
Data being stored is very important.. I really want to minimalize data loss as much as possible... I am hoping someone can steer me in the right direction
If the data is really important then you'll need multiple backups if you want to eliminate (as much as possible) the risk of data loss. Especially if you're using any raid-like storage system.
I wouldn't use any kind of raid with important data without atleast 1 full backup. Raid is made to maximise availability, which means that the data is always accessible even during a hardware failure. But it does little to protect against other types of data loss, and runs a big risk of total data loss if too many disks fail or the array can't be rebuilt after a failure.
ZFS and btrfs are better and will do more to protect against data corruption and accidental deletion, but you still have the risk of losing everything if too many disks fail. So you really do still need to have a backup.
Personally I use snapraid, which uses snapshot redundancy (rather than real time). It will protect the data from multiple disk failures and can check for and fix corrupted data. It works with already filled disks and you can add and remove disks at any time without having to format. And if too many disks fail then you only lose the data on those disks. The downside is that it doesn't work in real time, you run a periodic update when it calculated parity for new or modified files. So it's fine for storage of files which don't change often but useless for other purposes.
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Will do my research.. Yeah I may scrap raid.. or i may run ZFS on a raid 1 array... just ot make sure everything is okay...
Is BTRFS fully trustable with that amount of data yet.. i know its still in active development/released..
and whats the real different between BTRFS and ZFS
I haven't done much with either of them. I think ZFS has better performance (if you have the hardware for it) and scales better, and supports more RAID modes. Btrfs can do the equivalent of raid 5 or 6 but it's not as well supported as it's equivalent of raid 1.
Definitely do your research. It's hard to come up with a reliable storage solution without spending a ton of money.
Yup will do.. thanks for your help.. I have dealt with data corruption in the past and hate it.. I definitley like the idea of having a central server to store most of my files.. and have light-weight computer /Lowwer amounts of storage on gaming computer so things can just be more branched... Its kind of time to stop the ridiculous hard drive sizes in desktops haha... I do not trust the cloud fully yet... so thats why I am going this route
Go with an Intel build. FreeNAS can be pretty picky about the hardware it runs on. Also, BTRFS is not production ready.
Me too, I've lost a lot of stuff to corruption and disk failures. I'm always telling people to do proper backups but I don't do much myself :P right now I have a backup of important stuff and everything else I just use snapraid for redundancy and integrity checking.
The other day I saw the first corrupted files since building the server, but it was easy to repair with snapraid. Something like ZFS or btrfs would handle that on the fly so you wouldn't even notice.
Im an rsync and snapper guy myself... Though I do wish linux would get a really REALLY polished multi distro backup solution with a fantastic GUI of enterprise grade around. << is that really asking for too much haha
Windows Home server had a really nice way of backing stuff up that. I honestly miss on linux... I mean with a few configs here and there.. boom your entire computer could be backed up and the OS to an image that could be redeployed in case of a virus or you screwing it up.. I will say I miss that from the microsoft land
That would be nice. Right now all my backups are manual, except the backup for my mail server. I really need to put some time and thought in to setting it up properly.
Oh yeah, there were a few things I really. Liked about windows server and that was one of them.
Its almost enough to make me want to go back.. Almost... but I think with the extensibility of freeNAS.. You just cant beat it for NAS software.. not to mention you have the choice of running whatever media server you would like on the side... Anyways
Thanks for the feed back.. Ill do my research.. My goal isnt performance so I kinda like BTRFS if it serves the functions of a RAID 5 or 6 array without the need of actually running RAID.. I may do RAID 1 so there are drives with good data if one were to fail.
BTRFS for anything other than RAID1 is not stable, do not use it (yet).
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ZFS it is :D.. i may end up implementing checksumming in another way :D