Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions
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FreeNAS makes no sense, IMHO, ever. It's nothing but a crippled version of FreeBSD. FreeBSD I would use rarely, but it has its place. But FreeNAS, never, because FreeBSD, at a minimum is always better. So if something that would only rarely be the best choice is always better than your choice, that choice should be eliminated completely.
FreeNAS isn't the worst thing in the world, it simply is never the best choice. So even considering it represents a bad decision making process. Keeping it in the decision pool just serves to trigger emotional mistakes in decision making (read: Predictably Irrational, they explain a lot of why this happens in there.)
For a hobby/home system, the importance of these decisions is obviously very low. You could even run the worst possible option, OpenFiler, and mostly be okay. But why not do the best for free, since the good options are all free? There isn't any upside to the bad options, so just avoid them.
The reason that people talk about FreeNAS and the like is because they are "easy to get up and running." But that's a tricky sales pitch. In fact, the last thing that you care about with storage is how easy it is to set up. What you care about is how easy it is to maintain. FreeNAS makes it easy to get up and running and then screws you if anything goes wrong and because it is unnecessarily complex, there is more to go wrong.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
Do these card fail often?
Enterprise ones almost never fail.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
Is my assertion correct that the real disadvantage of the raid controller is really the raid controller itself? Obviously if they fail, you need replacement.
That's a big factor. Hardware RAID costs money and expects you to be dedicated to maintaining support, just like any proprietary, black box solution.
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Is that particular make considered an - obviously older - enterprise one?
I think one of the reasons people like me would jump to FreeNAS is that it's so easy and limited, has a nice graphical interface and doesn't require you to open a shell ever.
So other choices would be Solaris, XenServerVM and something? Except for Solaris, I haven't even heard of these before. I would need to learn a lot; I wouldn't know what a VM (Virtual Machine?) would be good for. Are all of these suggestions for both software raid and with the controller, or under the assumption of returning the controller?
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I think one of the reasons people like me would jump to FreeNAS is that it's so easy and limited, has a nice graphical interface and doesn't require you to open a shell ever.
Ah but it does. The problem is is that the GUI is only useful when everything works. When things break, you are still stuck having to use the CLI, expect the CLI for FreeNAS is harder and more complex than without FreeNAS and you don't know what was done to set it up making it harder for you to know what's going on with your own system as well.
So the very reason you think that FreeNAS is potentially viable is the most important reason why I say that it is not. If you have ANY concern about the CLI, FreeNAS should be eliminated as it has the hardest CLI situation for when it matters.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
Are all of these suggestions for both software raid and with the controller, or under the assumption of returning the controller?
Universal suggestions. XenServer or Solaris can both use hardware RAID and they both include enterprise software RAID. So they don't sway the decision beyond any other non-Windows offering.
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I've actually just finished reading your article, so I will stay away from it too. But I was hypothesizing on why it could be popularized in general; because people are afraid of entirely new operating systems and FreeNas is falsly advertised as something less complex.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
So other choices would be Solaris, XenServerVM and something? Except for Solaris, I haven't even heard of these before. I would need to learn a lot; I wouldn't know what a VM (Virtual Machine?) would be good for.
This really ups the ante, then. If you use Windows 10 and hardware RAID, is there really any learning for you in this? Anything significant at least? Not that you necessarily are looking at this as a learning opportunity, but that could be a huge factor.
Learning a hypervisor, how virtualization works, how enterprise servers are handled, a UNIX variant (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc.), maybe software RAID.... could be very valuable.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I've actually just finished reading your article, so I will stay away from it too. But I was hypothesizing on why it could be popularized in general; because people are afraid of entirely new operating systems and FreeNas is falsly advertised as something less complex.
Oh I'm very aware of why people promote it.. because it's little pain up front and the danger is pushed off until later. It's a "stick your head in the sand" thing. Same as people who skip backups and just hope that they never have a failure. It's easy to sell people on the idea because emotionally it gets them through an initial barrier and lets them ignore the problems until they are forced to face them.
But when analysed logically, it really isn't a product category that makes sense unless you are getting a product that is treated like a proprietary NAS and paying for black box, inclusive support on it, like you might with Nexenta (which makes it a bit of a different product category.)
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@scottalanmiller said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@anthonyh said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
If I understand correctly, you're looking to set up a "NAS" basically, right? If that's the case, I would recommend looking into something like FreeNAS/NAS4Free/OpenFiler. These are *NIX distributions geared towards the system being a file server. There are other features built in that you may or may not benefit from, but it may be worth it over running Win10 on the box.
FreeNAS and NAS4Free I would generally avoid (re: Jurassic Park Effect) as was mentioned. OpenFiler you need to run far, far away from. It's been out of development for many years, it's based on a system that vanished even longer ago, it's unpatched and was unstable and totally useless even when it was "current." They actually designed in data loss to coerce their users into paying for support or "upgrades" to fix the bugs that they included.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/373443-why-we-recommend-against-openfiler
I had no idea about OpenFiler. That's terrible. Glad I never used it!!
FWIW I always configure NFS and or SMB on a minimal Linux install if I need a file server. I think platforms like FreeNAS have their place (when used and understood appropriately). I do agree that it's very beneficial to understand what's going on under the hood.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I would need to learn a lot; I wouldn't know what a VM (Virtual Machine?) would be good for.
general rule is, if it is worth running, it should be virtualized (desktops don't count because they are the virtual to physical translation device.) So getting your hypervisor in place is the first step before even talking about an operating system, for example.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2015/04/virtualizing-even-a-single-server/
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/virtualization-as-a-standard-pattern/
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@anthonyh said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I had no idea about OpenFiler. That's terrible. Glad I never used it!!
Sadly, I did. Back in the 2.3 days. Thank goodness I never used it for iSCSI and never ran into some of the issues that people have with total data loss and no errors. I used to do a bit of support for it, building HA clusters and such. But the product was terrible even when it was at its peak. They made some crazy design choices and really were not competent at all.
Thankfully, they gave up and the product died years ago. We made some serious complaints and they responded to the thread with some half assed attempt at making the system look current, but it never went anywhere and last I had seen the system was dormant for many years.
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@anthonyh said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
FWIW I always configure NFS and or SMB on a minimal Linux install if I need a file server. I think platforms like FreeNAS have their place (when used and understood appropriately). I do agree that it's very beneficial to understand what's going on under the hood.
Where would that place be, though? If you know enough to be able to use it safely, then what's the benefit to it? And if you don't know enough that the GUI is useless, you don't really know enough to use it safely.
It's a Catch-22, those for whom it is safe to use would find the GUI to be in the way. Those that do not would find it dangerous.
If it wasn't storage, it would make more sense. But storage is always critical. You can't realistically have storage that isn't important if it fails.
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That's why the appliance with a GUI approach still makes sense for other kids of things like firewall devices. They are stateless, if it fails, just replace it. The device itself does not contain mission critical data.
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Unless I have completely misunderstood the information presented on the Adaptec website, it seems as most controllers would be compatible between each other. Hence I could also get a newer one, should the 51645 become unavailable.
Although I am slightly confused by what a HostRAID should be (is that software raid on a pci-raid controller?), it probably doesn't affect the 51645.
To be prepared for a controller failure, would it still make no sense to install the OS outside the array? The likelihood of the OS drive failing is probably a lot larger than that of the controller. But would that damage the array or have any impact on it, or could you just swap the OS drive without the array recognizing any difference?
Actually, coming back to this, @Dashrender suggested not installing the OS away from the array; by that you meant install it directly on the RAID6, right? As opposed to just having a single OS disk plugged into the raid controller rather than the mainboard sata port.Bootable arrays: before replacing the controller with a different model it is necessary to first install the operating system drivers for the new controller otherwise the operating system installed on the bootable array cannot start. In order to load the operating system drivers for the replacement controller just add the "new" controller to the system without arrays attached to it and install the driver before you remove the "old" controller.
That's from Adaptec. With only a single PCI slot, that seems like an impossible task.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
Unless I have completely misunderstood the information presented on the Adaptec website, it seems as most controllers would be compatible between each other. Hence I could also get a newer one, should the 51645 become unavailable.
That is generally true.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
Unless I have completely misunderstood the information presented on the Adaptec website, it seems as most controllers would be compatible between each other. Hence I could also get a newer one, should the 51645 become unavailable.
Although I am slightly confused by what a HostRAID should be (is that software raid on a pci-raid controller?), it probably doesn't affect the 51645.
To be prepared for a controller failure, would it still make no sense to install the OS outside the array? The likelihood of the OS drive failing is probably a lot larger than that of the controller. But would that damage the array or have any impact on it, or could you just swap the OS drive without the array recognizing any difference?
Actually, coming back to this, @Dashrender suggested not installing the OS away from the array; by that you meant install it directly on the RAID6, right? As opposed to just having a single OS disk plugged into the raid controller rather than the mainboard sata port.Correct, the main OS you'll interact with should be on the array. That said, the hypervisor, XS, should be installed on a USB stick or a SD card. These are easy to replace in case of a failure, and are suppose to be easy to clone prefailure to have a backup. So the system will boot from USB or SD card.. then access the RAID controller. in the case of the a failed RAID controller, boot into the RAID card software, import the array from the drives into the card, then reboot, booting to XS this time, now install drivers for the new RAID controller if needed, now XS should see the array and you can start your VMs.
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So it seems I should really get to know another OS. In that case I'll probably have to put the entire thing off for a while as I won't be finding the time in the months to come.
Which would be the easiest to learn from the good ones suggested here?And just to understand the decision-making a bit more, why is it so terribly stupid to run a client OS on a server if I have zero need for server OS capabilities? I'd assume there is a risk of it messing with the controller or anything of the sort, but if you care to elaborate, all the better.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
So it seems I should really get to know another OS. In that case I'll probably have to put the entire thing off for a while as I won't be finding the time in the months to come.
Which would be the easiest to learn from the good ones suggested here?Really - installing XenServer is brain dead simple. It often takes longer to download the ISO than it does to install XenServer. As for a Linux distro - for no reason what so ever, I say give Cent OS a try. Like XS, install is super easy, similar to Windows - the installer walks you through everything you need to do. The only non default you MIGHT need to make is ensure that SMB protocol gets installed, but you might not be able to do that through the installer anyhow.
After the ISOs are downloaded, I'm thinking 4 hours and you could have both XS and CentOS installed. Then you need to find out how create a SMB share - simple google search - and do it.
And just to understand the decision-making a bit more, why is it so terribly stupid to run a client OS on a server if I have zero need for server OS capabilities? I'd assume there is a risk of it messing with the controller or anything of the sort, but if you care to elaborate, all the better.
This revolves more around Doing IT at home. Ultimately it most likely won't matter if you do choose to use a client OS (technically Linux Mint is a Client OS - but I'm willing to bet many people would still rather see you run that instead of Windows for the OS on this setup). We don't know the ultimate goal of this box for you, but using a OS designed for serving up things to others (File Sharing) most generally has fewer other things running on it, fewer ways of being hacked, uses less resources and power.
You said IT isn't your primary job/career, and this is a pretty typical NAS type solution for Audio/Video problems as it appears you want to use it for. Yet you've wound up on an IT site, actually you're second one I think. Believe me I'm not trying to chase you away, I'm kinda curious how you came to find SpiceWorks for your solution instead of an audio/video, BD ripping website? Though because you have, we tend to steer people toward what we believe are proper IT solutions instead of band-aid style ones (think FreeNAS). One of the best things I've gathered from these forums is an understanding for getting rid of technical debt. For example, you mentioned that the machine you're using as a base had Windows 7 on it, so you have a free upgrade to Windows 10. But what happens when it's time to replace this machine with the next one? You'll either have to buy a Windows 10 license for it to keep the status quo, or learn something new. Since you're starting a new project now, why not just start now with a solution that you most likely will never have to migrate away from. Chances are that XenServer and CentOS will still be around in 10 years, updated of course (as you should be updating this hardware along the way) and will make life cheaper if not also easier when that time comes.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
So it seems I should really get to know another OS. In that case I'll probably have to put the entire thing off for a while as I won't be finding the time in the months to come.
Which would be the easiest to learn from the good ones suggested here?I don't know that they vary that much in difficulty to learn. But the Linux family are the best known and documented, CentOS is likely the easiest to get good resources for and is generally the most beneficial to have experience on, so win/win.
