I was scrolling through some videos on youtube the other day and discovered freenas. Software raid has been relegated to lowend, lowcost applications where folks didnt want to spend even a few hundred dollars for a pci raid controller. You dont need a controller for that and you can use your motherboard sata ports to build the volumes. I have a a dell poweredge 2900 with a perc h700 raid controller, 48gb of ram, 8x3tb hdds. When storage drives are connected directly to the motherboard without a raid controller, raid configuration is managed by utility software in the operating system, and thus referred to as a software raid setup.
The easy thing to do is just use freenas, set up raidz2, and forget about it. Id either ditch freenas if you insist on using hardware raid or use a more zfsfriendly sas controller lsi 9211 or. Can anyone recommend a recently built raid card that would work right off the bat with the latest freenas build. So my simple quesiton is on an omv build would it be better to go with the built in software raid or would it be better to purchase a hardware. Nas set up, hardware raid vs freenas or nas4free hardforum. Hardware raid strongly discouraged ixsystems community. Freenas openfiler microsoft iscsi performance shootout. The official freenas hardware guide ixsystems, inc. I have the raid configured as a raid 5 and have citrix xenserver 6.
This can hide things from zfs and cause problems, so a host bus adapter hba is recommended for use instead of a raid controller. E52603v3 32gb ddr423 non ecc but plan to go ecc when i have an opportunity asrock x99 i7 pro gaming supports rdimms my array is 5x wd 8tb mix of reds and white labels shucked from easystores im torn between raidz2 and raid 10 with an extra disk for backups. Jan 16, 2012 would really love to have the option of a hardware raid controller card for qnaps. Sata drive and raid controller recommendation for freenas. Hardware raid controller card option qnap nas community forum. This is because zfs uses software raid, and thus if you use a hardware raid controller there is an extra layer in between zfs and the discs. A look at the hardware behind modern raid controllers. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s performance. Makes me nervous to use software raid instead of a dedicated hardware raid controller. Oct 11, 2019 a nas created with freenas is the fastest and cheapest way to create a network device for filesharing or backup. I need to add an 8th drive for an 8drive raid6 nas setup. Unraid uses a special kind of software raid 4 that no hardware solution can duplicate. Apr 30, 2007 this card was made by adaptec to run on dell servers.
The only parts i didnt get yet are the raid controller and hard drives to go with it. A short video tutorial showing how to set up raid 5 with 3 hard disks on a freenas server. If i understand well because raid controller have 1g cache i should use hardware raid and present one logical drive to freenas and not using. Then in raidz1 it will take your four disks and stripe across them exactly the same as raid5.
The hardware raid card has no insights into what file system or data you have on the disk. I want a two drive fail recovery, raid 6 or what ever freenas uses for that. Jun, 2016 comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. Hardware selection is critical for freenas to be able to achieve this goal. This hardwareassisted software raid gives raid arrays that are not dependent on any particular operating system, and which are functional even before an operating system is loaded. You fill your server with drives, because many hardware raid controllers dont allow you. Anatomy of a hardware raid controller servethehome. Therefore, hardware raid is not needed and should not be used with freenas. Zfs can be software raid or it can simply be your filesystem. Canshould i run freenas if i already have a hardware raid.
If you have a hardware raid controller it will be more stable than a software raid setup and less prone to failure. He has a supermicro board, but it only has intels matrix raid. The controller handles a logical disk to the operating system and therefore the pool is unaware of the underlying configuration. I have recently recycled an older hp server dual xeon, w 72g ram and an hp p410 hardware raid card. If you are talking about rebuilding, a zfs system will only rebuild the actual data on disk, rather than the full disk in the case of a hardware raid card. If a given set of disks is provided to zfs using a hardware raid card, zfs will not be able to efficiently balance its reads and writes between them. I have an old machine with 8 sata ports, using 7 for storage and 1 for os ssd. Buy highpoint rocketraid 4320 pciexpress x8 eightport sata and sas hardware raid controller card with fast shipping and toprated customer service.
This controller takes on all of the management and control tasks of. If you just want jbod, buy a hba instead of raid card. Dell poweredge t610 storage configuration dell community. So after getting some community feedback on what disk configuration i should be using in my pool i decided to test which raid configuration. Jan 01, 2016 one thing that might stick out here is that hardware raid is not recommended. Aug 15, 2006 with the advent of hardware raid systems the battle was joined until the hardware array emerged victorious. Im trying to determine what raid controllers will be compatible with esxi and possibly provide passthrough, so that i can use freenas as my file server. A commonly asked question is what makes up a good raid controller. This way, people would have a way to select whether they want hardware raid via expansion card or software raid options. Zfs and hardware raid often does not play well and you might lose the pool under certain circumstances.
Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raids performance. This works the same for larger servers as well as desktop computers. T services on freenas and let raid card handles the smart monitoring, handles the alerting. This way, people would have a way to select whether they want. Selfbuilt nas w freenas and a hardware raid controller guys, i am just starting to do research and spec out a desktop nas freenas but as i read more into it i found that mobo raid controllers i plan to do 4x3tb raid5 are considered evil of all sorts, so they encourage people to get a controller. Its all software raid yet the fact is that it is all software raid it is.
While freenas will install and boot on nearly any 64bit x86 pc or virtual machine, selecting the correct hardware is highly important to allowing freenas to do what it does best. I want to add a raid 5 array to my freebsd server, and cant exactly afford a hardware controller at the moment. Freenas is enterpriseclass storage software designed with data protection as the primary objective. When setting up a raid array, common knowledge says that hardware raid is preferable to software raid. Hardware raid 5 should not be used with hdd larger than 1tb. The server i want comes with an adaptec 5805 hardware raid card. Top picks for freenas hbas host bus adapters freenas is a freebsd based storage platform that utilizes zfs. I am considering running freenas as a vm on it to create a nas for the house as well as easy plex server. I found a script for freenas that can be scheduled via cron to scrub each zfs pool and send an email of the results. Selfbuilt nas wfreenas and a hardware raid controller. The fact that it uses a popular enterprise file system and it is free means that it is extremely popular among it professionals who are on constrained budgets. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a raid controller card inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. Freenas is a free and open source network attached storage nas software based on freebsd. He has an i3 that doesnt support vtd, so that rules out software raid or zfs.
In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. If repurposing hardware raid cards with freenas, be aware that some hardware raid cards. Hardware and software raid benchmarking with intels nas. Zfs is an enterpriseready open source file system, raid controller, and. Im wanting to build a new nas server and was thinking going omv. If youre using freenas arent you stuck with zfs anyway. Freenas is based on zfs, which is an opensource file system, a raid controller and an enterpriselevel volume manager, which guarantees perfect data integrity. Poweredge 1900 and poweredge 840, sata hds, freenas. Dec 24, 2008 ive been running freebsd for a while now, and finally want to venture into using raid with freebsd. If freenas utilizes zfs software raid controller, then you would want to avoid a hardware raid controller. Can i use the jbod option on the raid card, or do i have to buy a normal sas controller for the zfs option. Zfs does not support growing the array by 12 drives at a time. Im considering looking for a good inexpensive hardware raid option for his esxi server. I found a script for freenas that can be scheduled via cron to scrub.
There are many purveyors of raid cards out there that will sell a fakeraid solution supporting raid 5 or raid 6 for a premium. You can use it as simply a filesystem on top of hardware raid or you can use it as your complete stack of software raid, lvm and filesystem. In fact it is best not to have one at all and let the software do all the work. Hardware raid controller card option qnap nas community. For those who prefer the diy approach, here are some things to look out for when setting up and managing your own freenas system. This will give the best performance for database server.
Solved hardware raid to software raid ixsystems community. With a sas hba you could pass the drives through to the os and manage at the software level freenas, storage spaces, etc. Use freenas with zfs to protect, store, and back up all of your data. Lets start the hardware vs software raid battle with the hardware side. One of the major sticking points of zfs the main file system of freenas is that you dont need a hardware raid controller. This is something of a misconception as all raid is software raid. After booting, access to the raid array is handled by software running on the computers main processor. Redundant array of independent disks controllers and cards explained. Can cause data loss if a write cache is used with a dead battery backup unit bbu sas expanders. This is a true hardware raid card, which makes it totally software independent and guaranteed to work with almost any operating system on the face of the planet, since you do not have to install any software to drive the raid cluster. Sometime you need to use both hardware and software raid to get the best of both worlds. Deciding between hardware and software raid in my freenas.
This seems like a much better solution than using ubuntu server but it also made me think about the hardware raid that these systems have. The simplest way to identify whether a solution is software or hardware raid is to read the technical specification or data sheet of the raid solution. Jun 21, 2016 im still researching freenas and nas4free so i will post my updates here as i go on. Freenas storage operating system open source freenas. My first freenas build, which will be purely dedicated to freenas. Solved freenas setup, hardware raid or zfs array spiceworks. How can i monitor hp p410 hardware raid degraded in freenas. It is three completely different products rolled into one so works differently in different scenarios. Aug 10, 2008 a short video tutorial showing how to set up raid 5 with 3 hard disks on a freenas server. Would really love to have the option of a hardware raid controller card for qnaps. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie. Freenas has some advanced configuration options with raid z and raid 2z, and the software raid drivers for windows provided by supermicro are awesome, but to keep the playing field as level as possible, raid 0 configured through the os was what i chose. So like software raid, hardware raid might not be identified as such at first glance. Freenas is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data.
Choosing between software raid and hardware raid depends on what you need to do and how much you want to pay. Raid controller patch for disks behind a raid controller. Its such an entirely different system that this is almost apples and oranges, so i guess i may be more looking into an excuse for using my hardware raid controller. Choosing a raid configuration for your home server butter, what.
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