Sep 09, 2012 the most critical difference i see between zfs and a traditional hardware raid controller is the ability to blind swap disks using a traditional raid controller. Freenas is an opensource and free operating system for pc that provides storage platform based on freebsd and supports sharing across windows, mac and unix. Keep in mind that zfs is really temperamental with the hardware you give to him. Aug 18, 2014 the steps that follow are not specific to the type of zfs volume you will create, they just give the general instruction to create a zfs volume and zvol device needed to create the iscsi extents. I feel much more comfortable using the smartarray controller now for certain. Click on the controller, click on configure, click on configure controller. Zfs and linux md raid allow building arrays across multiple disk controllers, or multiple san devices, alleviating throughput bottlenecks that can arise on pcie links, or gbe links. Jun 08, 2012 please also let me remind others that zfs should never be used with hardware raid controller. The zfs file system in freenas provides the best available data protection of any filesystem at any cost and makes very effective use of both spinning disk and allflash storage, or a mix of the two.
The disk section of the freebsd hardware list lists the supported disk controllers. My two reasons for saying that is i have has multiple raid 10 arrays fail due to a single side dying. I think that each one of these systems support drives up to 2tb. The zfs file system at the heart of freenas is designed for data integrity from top to bottom.
Can i use the jbod option on the raid card, or do i have to buy a normal sas controller for the zfs option. Suggested raidhd controller card for zfs proxmox support forum. My experience has been that freenas loads that driver but then defaults to using mfi. With data scrubbing, a raid controller may periodically read all hard disk. Even with jbod, you probably shouldnt use zfs with a dedicated raid controller. Thread starter digital god start date nov 11, also, are there certain drives to stay away from when looking to complete this task. Ssds, satadoms, or usb sticks can be used for boot devices.
There are many versions of these standard designs around, some are just sata hbas, which would be better for zfs, while others have a raid bios, which isnt so good for zfs. Building zfs based network attached storage using freenas. With zfs i assume the disk must be evacuated, then taken offline in the software before the drive can be exchanged. Aug 15, 2006 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. The controller runs perfectly and is fast enough to read and write large files to the drives simultaneously.
Freenas uses the file system zfs, which is not exclusive to freenas but is an extremely powerful file system, volume manager and software raid controller. It expresses just the biased opinion, that the supplier of the server hardware and the zfs programmer have done a better job than the supplier of the raid controller and the programmer of the raid firmware. Then in raidz1 it will take your four disks and stripe across them exactly the same as raid5. Its all software raid yet the fact is that it is all software raid it is just a question of where the software runs. May 15, 2010 zfs and linux md raid allow building arrays across multiple disk controllers, or multiple san devices, alleviating throughput bottlenecks that can arise on pcie links, or gbe links. The 92118i with it firmware has much wider os support it works perfectly in freenas 8 rc5 with no modifications and is a much better choice than the 92408i particularly if you are planning on using it for zfs. Re the op, the cards are probably using one of the marvel sata raid chipsets. I deployed using the two configurations you see above. Zfs on enterprise raid passthrough, and zfs on freebsd root. Its either that or i do small raid 5 pools, but that is inefficient since raid 5 works better in larger pools. Only problem is adding space in the future, but i like your suggestion for using mirrored pairs. Im a big zfs fan so my post is going to angle towards encouraging you in that direction. The adaptec ash1233 is a dual port ide raid controller card that features a silicone image sil680 sil0680 chipset.
Iirc the endpoint is a kernel panic a hung naszfs box and a corrupted zfs volume with nothing left in it recoverable if you are unlucky, or if you are lucky, it just requires a hard reboot, then it works again until the next time. This board has 3 sata controllers, the normal one provided by the chipset, which. Any benefit to that approach keeping in mind an all ssd zfs based approach or the hell w it and just go one largelarger raidz maybe raid2 depending on how many ssd devices you get in that poolvdev right. Exploring the best zfs zil slog ssd with intel optane and nand. Zfs assumes certain things, as does the raid controller.
A single raid controller can not access and check the data integrity in ram, nor can a single disk. Poweredge 1900 and poweredge 840, sata hds, freenas with zfs. Its based on the 82576 so it uses the igb driver, which is fine. If a hardware raid controller s write cache is used, an additional failure point is introduced that can only be partially mitigated by additional complexity from adding flash to save data in power loss events. With dedicated raid controller all this will happen in the processor of the controller. My observations are that regardless of performance, that can be fixed with arc cache in nvme or slog in ssd, zfs is better.
A sata or sas drive controller with any hardware raid functionality disabled. I dont know if they are supported by freenas, but i expect so. Sep 29, 2018 dell perc h730p mini raid card broken coursed zfs boot fail freebsd 11. Jun 21, 2016 i think ultimately ill end up on freenas with a new build from the money i get selling the raid card with ecc memory. Pools is used to create and manage zfs pools, datasets, and zvols. Card supports freenas and zfs raid includes mini sas to sata breack. The last straw for me was the 1708 release, when the zfs modules failed to build, leaving my home nas stuck on the old kernel. Re the op, the cards are probably using one of the marvel sataraid chipsets. I found on the freebsd forums i tried to get freenas to use the mrsas driver. Controller is an intel cougar point hba on supermicro x9sclfo.
On back01, each controller presents a 12 disk raid5 array and zfs concatenates them into the zpool you see above. Zfs dell perc h730p mini raid card broken coursed zfs boot. Its clear that with freenas you dont need the raid controller. Freenas makes two partitions on the drive, one for swap i think 2g or 4g is the default and a second for zfs. Cifs samba, ftp, nfs protocols, software raid 0,1,5 with a full web configuration interface. Lsi logic megaraid 928024i4e sas raid controller serial attached scsi, serial ata600 pci express 2. Sep 09, 2015 zfs assumes certain things, as does the raid controller. Whats your take on stripped raidzs pure ssd pools kinda like raid 50 on zfs as i dont think there is an official name for this.
Certainly a 16drive raid6 would be faster than a 16drive raid10 for large sequential io on decent raid systems. And a 16drive raidz3 will have large sequential performance similar to a drive raid0. Jul 30, 2019 freenas adaptec 6805 driver but i cant get smart status for drives. My plan is to build a zfsraidz6 based freenas box, but im open to any other suggestions or ideas. I dont insist on hardware raid, i know the tendency to move to software zfs, unraid etc. The server i want comes with an adaptec 5805 hardware raid card. Even if say, a filesystem such as ext4 had data integrity checksums, those checksums are not passed over to the volume manager, and neither are they passed over to the raid controller, etc and not passed. Apr 29, 2010 if you are concerned about data integrity, then create a bunch of single disk arrays or switch to the controller to jbod, and use zfs to create the raid arrays and use multiple, smaller raid arrays, as zfs will then stripe across them, in effect creating raid50 or raid60.
And imho zfs in freenas is not ready for enterprise. At the heart of any storage system is the symbiotic pairing of its file system and its physical storage devices. Zfs is fully prepared for the eventual failure of storage devices and is highlyconfigurable to achieve the perfect balance of redundancy and performance to meet any storage goal. 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. Raidz, the software raid that is part of zfs, offers single parity redundancy equivalent to raid 5, but without the traditional write hole vulnerability thanks to the copyonwrite architecture of zfs. How to install the highpoint webgui on freenas via usb. I want a two drive fail recovery, raid 6 or what ever freenas uses for that. Features freenas open source storage operating system. Lsi 92008e 6gbps 8lane external sas hba p20 it mode zfs freenas unraid norom. Using zfs by itself allows any controller to be used.
Whether this works or not in freenas is going to be up to the supported drivers. Freenas is a nas server that supports ftp, nfs protocols, software raid. Jan 22, 2020 freenas add raid drivers for mac download uploaded on 01222020, downloaded 8 times, receiving a 3. My current assumptions, please correct me if i am wrong on any of the following.
The management of stored data generally involves two aspects. If you are concerned about data integrity, then create a bunch of single disk arrays or switch to the controller to jbod, and use zfs to create the raid arrays and use multiple, smaller raid arrays, as zfs will then stripe across them, in effect creating raid50 or raid60. At the moment im using a couple 2x 2tb of sata drives zfs that are connected to the. Zfs on enterprise raid passthrough, and zfs on freebsd. Aug 07, 2015 download nas4free raid controller patch for free. Theres just no way to really know how they might interact. Drivers database if you want to work effectively, just download the drivers from our collection. So the raidz3 should be faster than the raid10 for large sequential reads and writes. Using this feature requires enabling ahci in the bios. Zfs best practices with hardware raid server fault. Since these controllers dont do jbod my plan was to break the drives into 2 pairs, 6 on each controller and create the raid 1 pairs on the hardware raid controllers. Coming from the world of zfs this is extremely poor performance for the amount of disks. No hardware raid one less hardware component that can fail.
I personally wouldnt go for ecc if i already had a free processor unless i was going to be using it for something important e. This would give me 2gb of cache from the controller 1gb per 3 raid 1 groupings and then use zfs to create the striping groups. I find the hba controller and freenas zfs setup to be much more reliable than my last hardware raid 5 setup on openfiler. These hgst drives are mentioned on compatibility list and generally 71605 controller seems to supports 4kn drives in general as there are many other seagatewd 8tb, 10tb models mentioned 4kn all of them. Whereas hardware raid is restricted to a single controller, with no room for expansion. Freenas is a free and open source network attached storage nas software based on freebsd. With freenas using zfs as well as effective storage tiering using ssd and ram caches, many users will seek to create a large capacity pool. Drivers for it were never officially released for windows 7 but this guide and drivers will help you enable your sil680 chipset in windows 7 x64 or itanium. Im experimenting with a spare dell h310 i have laying around as backup for my freenas server which uses 3 of those cards.
Raid controllers write their own proprietary filesystems to the drives, which impedes or interferes with much of zfss feature set. Do you really need to buy a hardware raid controllers when using zfs. Your data is still better off on a decent hardware raid setup with ufs than a single ufs disk. Raidzn with 8 drives and a lot of ram servethehome forums. If the disk does not appear in the output, check to see if the controller driver is. I have this installed with 8 drives so far in a freenas box and it is running great. This provides freenas and zfs direct access to the individual storage drives. A typical install is a xen hypervisor and a freenas file server. Raidzn with 8 drives and a lot of ram servethehome. Nas set up, hardware raid vs freenas or nas4free h. Selfbuilt nas wfreenas 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. A great deal is lost when zfs is handed storage thats been abstracted away through a layer of raid. Im on the fence about whether to give special treatment to the 2tb of more crucial files i.
Raidz, the software raid that is part of zfs, offers single parity redundancy equivalent to raid 5, but without the traditional write hole vulnerability. This item 8 port sata iii nonraid pcie x4 controller card supports freenas and zfs raid includes mini sas to sata breack out cables iocrest sipex40097 16 port sas pcie 2. On back02, the raid controller is configured in jbod mode and disks are pooled as. The official freenas hardware guide ixsystems, inc. Ive got an areca arc 1212 and i know that hardware raid isnt a good idea when using zfs. Please also let me remind others that zfs should never be used with hardware raid controller. In this article we will cover configuration of freenas add raid to setup zfs storage disks and to add a raidz same a raid 5, click on drop down list. Iirc the endpoint is a kernel panic a hung nas zfs box and a corrupted zfs volume with nothing left in it recoverable if you are unlucky, or if you are lucky, it just requires a hard reboot, then it works again until the next time. I plan to install a nas with freenas, the filesystem will be zfs. 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.
The features of zfs, which is a combined file system and logical volume. If youre using a raid controller that doesnt even offer jbod mode, youre pretty much stuck with ufs. The drives have been running nearly 247 since 2010 for the ears, since 2012 for the earx and since 2015 for the ezrx. Download freenas 11 freenas supports hot pluggable drives. Selfbuilt nas wfreenas and a hardware raid controller. Power off, pluck in some fancy drives and off you go. You need nonraid controllers to properly utilise zfs. Hp dl360p gen8 p420i controller ixsystems community. Nov 18, 2018 re the op, the cards are probably using one of the marvel sataraid chipsets. If freenas utilizes zfs software raid controller, then you would want to avoid a hardware raid controller.
Isa pci 3,does anyone know how to get the drivers installed in freenas 11 for the sgl card and also get the raid webgui going. Any hba controller like lsi 92078e will work well even with freenas considering you connect this box over a 8088 sas connector any thing below 9207 is using pcie 2 interface. Im very new to the freenas world, but i have an old computer lying around and want to turn it into a freenas box. Have you considered switching to an h200h310 card in it mode, since direct disk access is recommended for zfs. Using a controller like areca or highpoint to simply give raw disks to zfs is not going to work properly in particular to bad sectors and other timeouts. The steps that follow are not specific to the type of zfs volume you will create, they just give the general instruction to create a zfs volume and zvol device needed to create the iscsi extents. Silicone image sil680 controller in windows 7 x64 tkrns. Freenas is a free nas networkattached storage server, supporting. Mar 12, 2014 thanks very much for clearing up my misunderstandings of freenas and raid controllers.
You need non raid controllers to properly utilise zfs. Both machines have a pair of areca 1231ml raid controllers with supersized bbwc battery backed write cache. The freenas community is full of guys who killed their zpools with malfunctioning server memory or inappropriate power supplies. 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. I think ultimately ill end up on freenas with a new build from the money i get selling the raid card with ecc memory. Freenas adaptec 6805 driver but i cant get smart status for drives. I still have these same drives a year later which are now in a freebsd 11. The storage tab lists the configured volumes along with their size, free space and health. This item 8 port sata iii nonraid pcie x4 controller card supports freenas and zfs raid includes mini sas to sata breack out cables lsi logic sas 92078i storage controller lsi00301 lsi sas92078e logic sgl sas pcie 123. The hcl states that the perc h730 controller is supported by the mrsas4 driver. Driver for freenas install rocketraid drivers list. So it will expect a proper hardware to work as it should. Raid controller patch for disks behind a raid controller.
If you really want to use zfs with its power, get a proper hba card or a raid controller that can be flashed with it initiatortarget firmware and youre good to go. We generally suggest using your motherboards chipset sas and sata controllers first as those are the least expensive ports and often among the best performing and lowest power. So if your server is only pcie 2 dont spend the money and get the 9200. Download freenas free operating system to backup your data. On my test system the three disks are called ada1, ada2 and ada3 note that ada0 is the freenas system disk. Oct 25, 2017 zfs woes, and red hats penchant for yanking hardware support like a perc4e raid controller i encountered this spring, have brought me to the point that the only new centos installations ill make will be kvm guests.
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