What are you doing for home NAS?

Sat Jan 4 15:00:49 EST 2014

The ReadyNAS RAID-X lets you start with 1 drive and as you add drives it
will grow the filesystem with a RAID setup.  I think Drobo does that too.
 I'm not sure the Synology does.  That is a nice feature for the home user.
 Some hardware RAID cards let you reconfigure the RAID setup w/o losing the
data as well.

NetApp used to use RAID 4.  You can add drives onto it & grow the
filesystem, but one drive was "hot" for the pairity.  RAID5 distributes it.

Nowadays, with fast CPUs, I'm not a fan of hardware RAID.  It runs on an
embedded cpu with proprietary software (firmware) that doesn't get updated
often.  Software RAID like mdadm, btrfs, ZFS is part of the OS and gets
regular OS updates.  Today's multicore systems have excess cpu speed that
is probably faster then the embedded cpu would be.  I can take those disks
to another system to read even if it's from Sparc to x86 or ARM.  With
hardware raid, I probably need the same model of card with the same
firmware.  If the card fails, I have a whole 'nother issue

On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 7:34 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote:

>  On the ReadyNAS 3100 we did Netgear's proprietary X-RAID
> http://www.readynas.com/?p=214. From day1 we started with  a 4-drive set.
> Recently when 1 drive was showing a potential failure, I bouoght a
> replacement, popped the old drive out and popped the new one in. The most
> time it took me was to find the rack it was in. I do agree 100% with JABR
> because we were both burned by a RAID5 failure on 2 different machines.
> Both ZFS and BTRFS have built-in functionality that will give you
> sufficient protection.
>
> On 01/03/2014 09:41 PM, John Abreau wrote:
>
> I'm not doing RAID separately. ZFS has the RAID-like functionality baked in already.
>
> My personal opinion is that RAID-1 mirroring is more robust than RAID-5. More expensive in terms of disk, but it's a genuine case of "you get what you pay for".
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jan 1, 2014, at 8:55 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> <gaf at blu.org> wrote:
>
>
>  Thanks JABR. In the context of a home NAS and the state of Linux and
> FreeBSD today where we have a number of viable choices. what would
> youall chose for a file system and redundancy:
> For example, ZFS, BTRFS, EXT[3,4], or other.
> Rely on file system for integrity, RAID1 (strictly mirroring), RAID5,
> RAID6, RAIDZ (ZFS)
> Since both ZFS and BTRFS check for problems is it really necessary for a
> home implementation to use these on combination with RAID, especially if
> you do frequent backups.
>
>
> On 12/31/2013 11:40 PM, John Abreau wrote:
>
>  Yes, it's ZFS. As I recall, there were two ZFS options; offhand, I
> don't recall their names. One was a RAID-1 equivalent, and I believe
> the other may have been a RAID-5 equivalent. I chose the RAID-1
> equivalent.
>
> And yes, I still use it.
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Dec 30, 2013, at 11:53 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org<mailto:gaf at blu.org> <gaf at blu.org>> wrote:
>
>
>  I assume you are still using your FreeNAS system. What file system
> are you using, ZFS?
>
> On 12/30/2013 10:56 AM, John Abreau wrote:
>
>  Even if the MyBook Live turns out to be more reliable than I'd
> expect, that doesn't negate the poor performance of the unit,
> especially when it's accessed simultaneously by multiple clients.
> With my usage patterns, that limitation is extremely noticeable.
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Ken D'Ambrosio <ken at jots.org<mailto:ken at jots.org> <ken at jots.org>> wrote:
>
>    On 2013-12-30 09:41, John Abreau wrote:
>
>  After trying FreeNAS, I'd no longer consider the
>
>     consumer-level drives
>
>  such the MyBook Live as serious options.
>
>     I think this stance is a little overly cautious; there is  data
>    showing
>    that consumer drives don't fail at rates significantly different
>    than
>    "server-grade" drives -- e.g.,
>    http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/12/04/enterprise-drive-reliability/
>    (though I also remember studies done on significantly larger
>    datasets a
>    couple years ago, but they aren't leaping at me from Google).
>     What I
>    *have* found to be troublesome is that some RAID solutions don't
>    handle
>    drives that spin down very well.  For this reason, I tend to
>    either go
>    with "server-grade" drives, or really do my homework, and find
>    drives
>    that work with the solution (e.g., 3Ware has -- or, at least,
>    had -- an
>    approved hardware list that I find useful).  But I think that,
>    with a
>    suitable amount of caution, there's money to be saved here
>    without loss
>    of functionality or increased risk of data loss.
>
>    $.02,
>
>    -Ken
>
>    P.S.  One thing I should add here, just from a
>    hoo-boy-did-I-stub-my-toe
>    perspective: as a rule, I usually have my arrays use just a
>    leeeeetle
>    bit less than the whole disk.  I had a large RAID-5 array once,
>    and one
>    of the drives failed.  I got it RMA'd *with the same model
>    number* from
>    the manufacturer... and it was one sector smaller.  THAT was
>    annoying.
>
>
>
>  On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Mark Komarinski
> <mkomarinski at wayga.org <mailto:mkomarinski at wayga.org> <mkomarinski at wayga.org>> wrote:
>
>
>  On 12/30/2013 1:00 AM, John Abreau wrote:
>
>  I tried a couple cheaper options such as the WD MyBook Live
>
>  network
>
>  drive, but I wasn't really satisfied with them, They were
>
>      slow to
>
>   access, slow to spin up when inactive, and had serious
>
>  performance
>
>  issues when more than one process was accessing them over NFS,
>
>  which
>
>  was the only filesharing option I used. They contained just a
>
>  single
>
>  drive, which means no raid-1 safety net when the disk starts to
>
>  go bad.
>
>   After getting burned by non-NAS drives in a RAID 5 array, I'm
>
>     going
>
>  RAID
> 1 for home use from now on.
>
>
>  Then I picked up an HP N40L mini cube server and installed
>
>      FreeNAS
>
>  on
>
>  it, on a usb thumb drive that I plugged into the internal USB
>
>  port on
>
>  the motherboard. It was the first NAS I've tried at home that I
>
>  was
>
>  happy with.Performance is much better, even with multiple
>
>  processes
>
>  accessing the unit, and large file copies both to and from the
>
>  unit
>
>  seem to complete more quickly.
>
>  Ooh.  I forgot about that little guy.  Replacement for is seems
> to be
> the N54L.  Fits 4 drives, might just get 2x4TB and leave the
>
>     other
>
>  two
> for future expansion.
>
>
>  I'm currently using two of the four drive slots with a pair
>
>      of 2gb
>
>   drives, configured with ZFS as a raid-1 mirror set. To properly
> support ZFS, I followed the recommendations in the HOWTO I found
> online and maxed out the RAM at 8 GB.
>
> It's been a couple years since I set it up, so I imagine there's
>
>  a
>
>  newer model available by now that will accept larger drives and
>
>  more RAM.
>
>  After trying FreeNAS, I'd no longer consider the
>
>
>  Err, you cut off there...
>
> -Mark
> _______________________________________________
> gnhlug-discuss mailing listgnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>
>     <mailto:gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org> <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
>
>  http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ [1]
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> <gaf at blu.org>
>
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20140104/3cd51f46/attachment.html 