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Hi all.
Only a week ago I had never heard of Freenas. I now have a working Freenas box, but some concerns I want to be sure on before it goes to production. Many of my concerns are related to the raid.
The final plan is:
4 x 2TB Drives in a RAID5 config leaving us with 6TB of usable storage.
File System will be UFS (based on my research)
At least 2 NICS load balancing over GIgabit ethernet.
Questions:
1. I understand that software raid CANNOT be expanded? I have been testing with 4 hotswap bays on the box and cannot simply pull drives and rebuild or expand. Is this a limitation?
2. I tested with 3 drives with a complete raid 5 - pulled one of the drives for a test HOT - reinserted the drive - I had to reboot the NAS to get the rebuild started? limitation?
3. I need to initially move 2TB of existing data to the NAS - is there a way to copy sata directly to the storage rather than 2TB over the network?
4. I have read that rsync will allow us to backup the NAS - Can we have another identical NAS on the LAN and have rsync update that NAS on a daily basis without having to move all the data each time?
5. I am not so sure about the limitations of the software raid in Freenas. I have an adaptec 3405 controller - in our windows servers the card would not see over 2TB - Will freenas be able to use the 8TB in drives on this card? Debating scrapping the software raid and putting in the 3405- any advice?
Thanks in advance!
Only a week ago I had never heard of Freenas. I now have a working Freenas box, but some concerns I want to be sure on before it goes to production. Many of my concerns are related to the raid.
The final plan is:
4 x 2TB Drives in a RAID5 config leaving us with 6TB of usable storage.
File System will be UFS (based on my research)
At least 2 NICS load balancing over GIgabit ethernet.
Questions:
1. I understand that software raid CANNOT be expanded? I have been testing with 4 hotswap bays on the box and cannot simply pull drives and rebuild or expand. Is this a limitation?
2. I tested with 3 drives with a complete raid 5 - pulled one of the drives for a test HOT - reinserted the drive - I had to reboot the NAS to get the rebuild started? limitation?
3. I need to initially move 2TB of existing data to the NAS - is there a way to copy sata directly to the storage rather than 2TB over the network?
4. I have read that rsync will allow us to backup the NAS - Can we have another identical NAS on the LAN and have rsync update that NAS on a daily basis without having to move all the data each time?
5. I am not so sure about the limitations of the software raid in Freenas. I have an adaptec 3405 controller - in our windows servers the card would not see over 2TB - Will freenas be able to use the 8TB in drives on this card? Debating scrapping the software raid and putting in the 3405- any advice?
Thanks in advance!
ASKER
Thanks 2Cs - thanks for your answers but there may be some confusion- THis is a custom NAS box - your question #5 indicates that you didnt understand perhaps. I need someone who know FreeNAS.
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ASKER
Just an update eabeukes....I have successfully created a FREENAS BOX
P4 ASUS P5LD2-VM Board 2G ram and 4 x 2TB WD Sata Drives in hotswap containers
I had tested with only 3 x 1TB drives for a few weeks using the softraid option and it ran perfectly. To maximize storage as I know I cannot expand the storage in the future without a FULL backup and reconfig of FREENAS i went with the above to achieve 6TB of total storage.
Now i am having nothing but problems.... I cannot get the raid to initialize properly with the 4 x 2TBS.
Before I go crazy troubleshooting... I should be able to do this right? A guy in the sourceforge forum told me no problem...??
P4 ASUS P5LD2-VM Board 2G ram and 4 x 2TB WD Sata Drives in hotswap containers
I had tested with only 3 x 1TB drives for a few weeks using the softraid option and it ran perfectly. To maximize storage as I know I cannot expand the storage in the future without a FULL backup and reconfig of FREENAS i went with the above to achieve 6TB of total storage.
Now i am having nothing but problems.... I cannot get the raid to initialize properly with the 4 x 2TBS.
Before I go crazy troubleshooting... I should be able to do this right? A guy in the sourceforge forum told me no problem...??
If this isn't done automatically you then it will need to be done on RAID controller.
2) If the system is not a Hot Swap drive system then you would need to power down first.
3) When the drives are in RAID it is not recommended to remove one to make changes as they are to be written to the other. Why not use a Cross-Over cable or USB cable to complete the transfer
4) Sounds like you mean an incrimential backup which runs daily and backups only changed files
5) Would need model numbers of NAS and what system the SCSI card is in.
Al