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New version of FreeNAS is out - now if only Intel releases the Xeon E3 v6 processors so I can get the rest of the components for my build.
FreeNAS, the FreeBSD-derived software that turns a server into a network-attached storage box, has upgraded, changed its name and now asserts it's a hyperconverged platform.
The new name is FreeNAS Corral, replacing the expected FreeNAS 10, because “Only a new name could do justice to the sheer amount of change and new functionality here” according to the project's blog.
That boast may not be unjustified: during development Corral was described as a “totally redesigned, ground-up rewrite of FreeNAS” thanks in part to a “rewritten middleware architecture”.
While OpenZFS is still under the hood, the GUI's been rebuilt, complete with speedometer-styled dynamic dials reporting on the disposition of disk and IO. Other new additions include the bHyve hypervisor and a web-based virtual machine management tool that “launches guest operating systems in serial consoles using VM templates or .iso installation images.” If you fancy doing compute in containers rather than virtual machines, Docker's been integrated too.
iXSystems, the company that sponsors FreeNAS development and will happily sell hardware for you to run it on, is therefore billing it as a general-purpose computing appliance that enjoys close proximity between compute and storage, rather than a mere NAS. It's also claiming that FreeNAS Corral is the world's first open-source hyperconverged platform.
The hyperconverged market has, to date, mostly been about targeting large-ish organisations. Even smaller players like Scale Computing have emphasised mid-market buyers with dozens or hundreds of seats. So there's probably a niche out there in which Corral can round up many users.
Well, bit the bullet on all my stuff. More expensive than I originally thought it would be but it should be all worth it. Decided I'll use the hypervisor built into FreeNAS Corral to run Windows Server 2016 to play around with and use for backups with WSB or Veeam (once bhyve supports USB pass through for the 4TB drive I got). Guess I'm going a little further than just a NAS with this whole project.
-Fractal Design Node 804 case
-Xeon E3 1230 v6
-Supermicro X11-SSM-F
-16GB DDR4-2400 ECC
-Corsair RM550x
-4x WD Red 2TB
-Sandisk SSD Plus 120GB
I will have a (probably) DS416j offsite as a mirror with 4x 8 or 10 TB IronWolf (non pro) drives simply as a backup, and upload critical data from the NAS to Amazon Glacier as needed.
What connection are you going to use? If you're going to use Thunderbolt (1/2/3), you really won't get the speed benefits unless you use SSDs in the array. Otherwise, USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 will more than likely be fast enough to saturate what the drives are capable of. USB will be a lot cheaper, too (WD MyBook Duo 8TB is $319 on Amazon). But if you plan on daisy-chaining off Thunderbolt then obviously you'd want one of those devices.
What connection are you going to use? If you're going to use Thunderbolt (1/2/3), you really won't get the speed benefits unless you use SSDs in the array. Otherwise, USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 will more than likely be fast enough to saturate what the drives are capable of. USB will be a lot cheaper, too (WD MyBook Duo 8TB is $319 on Amazon). But if you plan on daisy-chaining off Thunderbolt then obviously you'd want one of those devices.
hmm.... dunno, just figured id go with Thunderbolt because Mac/Apple.
USB3.0 should be more than enough for my needs. My primary use is storage of all my media. Mainly a spot for my photos I take and for editing in Lightroom or Photoshop.
I will have a (probably) DS416j offsite as a mirror with 4x 8 or 10 TB IronWolf (non pro) drives simply as a backup, and upload critical data from the NAS to Amazon Glacier as needed.
It is up on Amazon now at least but sadly there is not a huge saving to be had right now buying the older 1815+. Really hoping there will be a clearance of them a bit and maybe grab one for $500-600.
It is up on Amazon now at least but sadly there is not a huge saving to be had right now buying the older 1815+. Really hoping there will be a clearance of them a bit and maybe grab one for $500-600.
Yeah, not a huge drop yet for the 1815, but there is VERY limited availability for the 1817 (only one or two vendors have it, gouging on price right now), so things may change in the next month once Amazon themselves get good stock of it on hand.
Last edited by stogie1020; 04-19-2017 at 07:46 PM.
Finally got things up and running yesterday. Processor and board came Monday (SuperBiiz surprised me since I saw a couple questionable reviews but it processed quickly), memory came the day after, and then the OOB license I needed got sent yesterday since the board needed a BIOS update to support the Kaby Lake processors. Need to figure out why Java won't launch the iKVM in macOS but it works OK in Windows, but it's laughable on a Retina display since it doesn't scale so it's super tiny. Disappointing that last Saturday IX Systems announced that they are downgrading FreeNAS Corral to a Technical Preview since it has a lot of instability and isn't going to be developed full-time. So instead they are going to start porting features to FreeNAS 9.10 like GUI support for VMs and the new dashboard GUI that was in Corral. According to their forums it should be out on Monday so I'll be waiting so I can get a Server 2016 VM up to run Plex and then Veeam backups once bhyve has pass-through USB support.
Ordered the 1817+ w/8GB RAM and 7x 6TB IronwolfPro drives.
I also ordered 2x server network cards with 2x network ports each so I can set up LACP on the switch for 2 connections each for the workstations and all 4 connections on the NAS.
everything but the network cards will arrive tomorrow afternoon, so I will set up with LACP on the NAS only and test throughput via a single 1GB connection and then re-test once I have the LACP set up for each workstation to see what kind of difference there is. I will take any advantage, but at $35 per dual-nic network card, if it doesn't do much I am only out $70...
the 1817+ is up and running with a 20TB capacity (5x6TB in RAID5 btfrs, 1x6TB as a hot spare and 1x6TB as a cold spare).
I am using all four LAN ports on the 1817+ set up on the switch as a LACP team.
I have been able to shut down one of the two production machines and install the dual port NIC and have that machine's two connections set up as a teamed LACP connection as well, showing a 2Gbps max throughput in the connection properties. Once the second production machine stops it's current process, I will install the dual NIC card and set up LACP teaming for that connection as well. Then I can really test the benefits of the LACP teams.
My goal is to eventually switch these teamed connections to single 10Gbps sfp+ using DAC cables since the runs are short (~10ft) and I don't want to have to deal with matching copper cables to sfp+ transceivers and end points.
Also, the 416j is ordered with 4x8TB drives to serve as offsite backup for the 1817+ via Synology Hyperbackup.
I did some testing and I cannot upload directly from the 416j to Glacier, so I will have to temporarily extract the files I want from the Hyperbackups as they occur on the offsite NAS and upload them, then delete the temp copies. It's not ideal, especially considering some of the data set sized are in the 1-3 TB range, but it will have to do for now since the offsite connection is so much faster than the main site's connection. Eventually I will have to decide if the time loss of the writing of the temp copies is longer than the time loss of using a slower connection to upload to Glacier.
416J Arrived and is now populated with 4x 8TB drives in RAID5. I was too chicken to do RAID0, and the network speeds for transfer would negate any achieved write speed advantage of the RAID0.
I am currently using HyperBackup to backup via the LAN the first time. It's 12hrs in and 50% done... I may have to limit my backups to once a week and only retain two based on the total size of the active NAS storage volume. As it grows, I am going to rapidly run out of room on the remote 416J for multiple versions of the HyperBackup.
I think I may take a slightly different path with what I just built. Since FreeNAS Corral got scrapped, I haven't had any luck getting a VM to successfully install on the FreeNAS 11 builds so I haven't been doing much with a "cool factor". Now I'm thinking to do some ESXi for proven virtualization. Only thing is that I'll need an HBA since FreeNAS needs direct access to disks and passing through the onboard SATA ports leaves none for other VMs, which stinks because there's eight of them and I'd realistically only use one, maybe two. But my inner tinkerer wants to get it going and learn virtualization more.
Started having a problem with the newer production machine and the 2x rj45 teaming card. Turns out the card is PCIx1.0a and the X99 motherboard does not support it. I will keep it as a spare for the Z77 motherboard machine and order a new PCIx card that is v2 compliant to work with the X99 MB.
Started having a problem with the newer production machine and the 2x rj45 teaming card. Turns out the card is PCIx1.0a and the X99 motherboard does not support it. I will keep it as a spare for the Z77 motherboard machine and order a new PCIx card that is v2 compliant to work with the X99 MB.
Can't find any compatible NICs that fit your requirements even like on eBay? Just going by your post PCI-X kinda came and went, but PCIe has been widely adopted and is supposed to be fully backwards compatible.
So thinking I am finally going to bite the bullet and pickup the 1817+. I have a $150 worth of rewards points for BH Photo Video to use by the 7th. Thinking of going with the 8gb of RAM so I basically never need to upgrade it unless anyone has another suggestion instead. It will just be used as a home setup to backup files. I will also use one of my old externals I will be clearing off as a compressed offsite backup. I had planned to do a little more research on this but completely forgot about the rebate money till my calander notice I set to remind me to spend it went off today. I assume I am able to do a compressed backup of data to an extenal drive?
I am still deciding between either a RAID5 with 6 2TB drives (10TB total) or a RAID6 with 6 2TB drives (8TB total) but with more fault tolerance. I want to then make the last two slots a RAID1 mirror set to make a compressed backup of those disks. I believe that shouldn't really be an issue but not sure. Then I would backup the compressed backups onto an external for offsite or see what the cost is for cloud backup.
My last issue is that I am hoping to use old Hitachi drives from a retired enterprise grade NAS system. They are 2TB, Sata 3.0Gbs. 7200rpm. They are 7 years old but to say I have an abundance of spares would be putting it lightly.
Would it maybe be better to go with a RAID6 across all 8 drives and then get an 8TB USB external to connect up to the Synology to back that up too instead of using 6 drives inside the synology in a RAID5 backing up to a mirror set in the other two slots in the Synology?
I am staring at my 1817+ but have no answers to your setup questions.
I will offer you the suggestion of using one of the bays as a "hot spare" bay with a drive in it ready to take over in case of actual drive failure (esp. since your drives are already 7 years old). I keep one as a hot spare and a second spare as a cold spare next to the 1817+.
Also, I highly encourage you to use BTFRS as the file system as it makes "snapshoting" available which can be a good defense against crypto variant malware.
Do you regular RAID or one of the Synology hybrid RAID setups? If I do either RAID6 or SHR-2 do with two drive failure do you still suggest doing a hot spare?
So Stogie you have not had any issues with BTRFS file system? The snapshot feature sounds really cool but at the same time the stuff I am reading sounds like it can also get messed up really easy as well.
Those are only two of what I have found but they both have me skeptical. I like the benefits you have pointed out but I also want something that is stable to run for long term storage which is one of my choices for doing a NAS. Won't be my only backup but I want it as stable as possible obviously as anyone would.
I have also made my decision. Going to order an 1817+ tonight with only 2gb of ram and then ordering a 16gb upgrade on Newegg. The total cost is only $3 more than the 8gb model. I don't know if I will need it but I plan to use this thing for 7-10 years without replacing it hopefully.
Stogie also what UPS setup do you have? I have a APC UPS that currently shutsdown my desktop. I will probaly end up just letting that hard shut down and protect the NAS instead as it only has one port out for sending a shutdown signal on the UPS.
Last edited by CCColtsicehockey; 08-03-2017 at 12:50 PM.
And thankfully it fits exactly where I had planned to put it in my office. Hopefully it has enough ventilation in that spot. If I need some more air on the sides I can always stack the two pieces of the stereo on top each other.
03-16-2017, 01:06 PM
