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Cerothen

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Cerothen

Good Morning all,

 

So through an unfortunate bit of circumstance I managed to lose all my data to drive failures (~20tb) yesterday. Running single parity in storage spaces I lost a drive on sunday, naturally I replaced it and started the repair... Unfortunately a second drive failed during the repair and that extended beyond the fault tolerance of the array. Those seagate three tb are a risky choice.

 

Anywho onto more important things:

 

I am trying to decide if I am going to stick with storage spaces or check out another technology. Currently I am looking at the following technologies:

  • FreeNAS[ZFS]
  • Storage Spaces
  • T-raid (FlexRAID)
  • UnRaid

I was hoping for some comments about your experiences with each one with things like typical array maintenance, expanding, replacing failures. If there are some alternate technologies that I am not considering I would also be interested in hearing about it.

 

Thanks!

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mguebert

I have used T-Raid, and Flexraid. I always seemed to have issues with both. About 6 months ago I made the decision to switch to FreeNas. It was a little more difficult for me because I am much more familiar / comfortable with windows OS's but I managed using tutorials to get my FreeNas setup. I have to say even though it is dedicated and doesn't do as much, that ended up being a blessing because now I don't tinker at all, it just works. I am running two zpools configured with 4tb and 3tb drives in a Raid Z2 config for a total of 22tb storage. I am full up to 15tb right now. 

 

Keep in mind there are some caveats, you must plan ahead for your storage needs. Once a pool is created it can only be expanded by adding Vdevs, meaning another grouping of drives. In other words, if you want to expand the only way is to add at least 2 drives in a mirrored config or 3 drives in a Raid Z1 or 4 + in a Raid Z2. These can be added under your main pool. Do some searching and you will find tons of info and tutorials out there. 

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I used to use unraid but moved to FlexRaid to get the storage onto a format that was recoverable externally.  Works well for me [knock knock].

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Doonga

I'm assuming you're running Windows, so my recommendation would be Stablebit Drivepool for your drive pooling needs and Snapraid for your parity calculations. I run a 20 drive array with 3 disks dedicated to parity. (I use linux with a different method of pooling drives.) Snapraid runs every morning to update the parity information. The only risk of data loss if all 3 parity drives failed would be the data that was added since the last time it ran.

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spootdev

After watching too many video lectures on different file systems..........I went with ZFS on Linux/Freebsd.  The CoW, snapshots and self-healing sold me.  Only two things I dont like.   1) No data rebalance across disks/vols    2) Have to add disks in "batches" to expand space........or the swap, sync, swap sync, etc with bigger drives.

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Cerothen

Interesting input so far, in terms of the Os's I actually run proxmox so I have a VM that is just a storage controller while other vms access the data, but the specific os of the storage controller could be anything this time around.

 

Ebr I assume your using flexraids snapshot offering instead of the transparent raid software. Have you ever had to recover any disks? Also my understand of flexraid is similar to what doing described in his post.

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kkhan

I am using tRAID as am running Windows Server on NTFS and am generally happy with it.  The main issue for me is that NTFS is not self healing so I have to regularly (every couple of months) take the array off-line and then run CHKDSK on each physical disk.  If there are any issues I have to correct and then resync the array.  However, I have never lost any data in the 2 years I have been using tRAID and have never had a crash.

 

If I had to start afresh I would probably choose ZFS.

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I am using the snapshot raid because my main goal is really the pooling and easy disk management.  I have had one disk fail and I replaced it and only lost a few things - which were easily recovered.  The biggest thing I like about Flex over UnRaid is the native file system and the ease of adding storage.  Adding to UnRaid was a huge ordeal and moving off of it was too because the data was not accessible on its own.

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hijinx

I'm running an ESXI box (on dell T20 XEON).

I have freenas (ZFS goodness) running in a VM (taking noted precautions - this is a good guide https://b3n.org/freenas-9-3-on-vmware-esxi-6-0-guide/)

FreeNAS storage is then shared out to other VMs.

I have an Ubuntu VM that runs Emby (and a few other services) which accesses content on the FreeNAS shares.

 

I have to say though that configuring freeNAS/ZFS is not for the fainthearted. There are the the points to note raised above on best choice of RAIDZ1/2/3 number of disks vs storage efficiency vs redundancy vs pool expandability etc

Also there are some best practices for ZFS that need to configured.

FreeNAS IMO should have an option to have such things set up as default on install . e.g. scrub schedules.

Sure a default config wont work for everyone, but its better than not having at all...

 

Note that for FreeNAS on ESXI you do need a CPU that supports passthrough (e.g. most XEONs) and a HBA for the disks,

But once set up its sweet :)

 

Alternatively you can run FreeNAS as host OS and have emby (etc) in a jail, but I personally prefer to run things in Linux rather than freebsd.

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I use Unraid 6.2 with Emby Docker and OpenELEC VM with Emby for Kodi, works really well :).

When fail more than 1 (or 2) disks, you would lost maximum the data on the particular disks. It's a small bonus over a simple Raid 5/6 solution.
 
For me Unraid is cool for home, but FreeNAS is more professional and powerful.
 
 

I am using the snapshot raid because my main goal is really the pooling and easy disk management.  I have had one disk fail and I replaced it and only lost a few things - which were easily recovered.  The biggest thing I like about Flex over UnRaid is the native file system and the ease of adding storage.  Adding to UnRaid was a huge ordeal and moving off of it was too because the data was not accessible on its own.

 

Adding drives to Unraid with the Preclear Disks Plugin is really easy and Unraid had maximum 2 minutes downtime. Without this plugin, yeah its really a ordeal.

Edited by Gokux
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xnappo

No raid, just nightly backups :) KISS

 

It is really the only choice if you really don't want to risk losing stuff. 

 

I have less stuff - 12TB of content - two 4TB full backup drives are in my fire safe, and the 3rd is my current backup drive.  I use Emby's virtualization so if the backup drive gets full before the storage I just make a new folder, take out the backup drive, and change the backup settings.

Edited by xnappo
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mediacowboy

I do drive bender for pooling my drives with backing up new content to a USB drive and then off load that once a week to a server off site in another city. Eventually I would like to do a encrypted cloud based backup solution in real time but that will take awhile for all my current stuff. I have roughly 16 TB of stuff (Music, Movies, TV, Music Videos, Games, and Books). With the option should I lose a drive or all my drives to have them mailed back to me to restore from.

Edited by mediacowboy
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mediacowboy

More visually appealing in Windows Explorer to have 1 drive with everything in it then multiple drives with stuff scattered. I know drive bender scatters the files between the drives, but visually I have one drive to look at for all my stuff. 

 

@@xnappo,

 

I hope this helps understand where I am coming from. I use Drive Bender more as a management software then anything else. I let it balance the hard drives and keep everything in decent performance.

 

This is what I see when I manage my media in Windows Explorer.

57a16901396d0_media.png

 

This is the size that windows see's

57a1691bcdbbe_size.png

 

This is what Driver Bender see's, Like I said further up I have it load balance my files so that no one drive is ever completely full. keeps things from bottle necking.

57a169639fdaf_drives.png

 

I do plan to start replacing the 4 TB with 8's as time and money allow. 

Edited by mediacowboy
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KarmaPolice

I've managed to get my whole setup working so that i have a local nas which stores my files for the first 15 days, then uploads the content to Amazon drive for longer term storage (amazon drive = unlimited storage for 60$ a year, though I think it's US only)...

 

You can still play everything direct from amazon drive when you want to watch it... and it's even all encrypted on amazon drive so Amazon can't go poking around what I've got up there (though they can probably figure it out by filesizes or something)... 

 

If anyone is interested I'm considering writing it up in a blog post... I'll check back here a bit later and see what people think.

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mediacowboy

I've managed to get my whole setup working so that i have a local nas which stores my files for the first 15 days, then uploads the content to Amazon drive for longer term storage (amazon drive = unlimited storage for 60$ a year, though I think it's US only)...

 

You can still play everything direct from amazon drive when you want to watch it... and it's even all encrypted on amazon drive so Amazon can't go poking around what I've got up there (though they can probably figure it out by filesizes or something)...

 

If anyone is interested I'm considering writing it up in a blog post... I'll check back here a bit later and see what people think.

I would be interested in how you have achieved this be it a blog post here or a pm.

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KarmaPolice

I would be interested in how you have achieved this be it a blog post here or a pm.

 

wow, that was fast... right on!... i'll format it a bit more nicely... just a big notepad doc right now and try and get it posted somewhere in the next week or so... will update back here with the location... 

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hijinx

wow, that was fast... right on!... i'll format it a bit more nicely... just a big notepad doc right now and try and get it posted somewhere in the next week or so... will update back here with the location... 

Very interested to hear more... being UK based I didn't see Amazon $60/unlimited before, but it seems they'll let me sign up (I have US amazon a/c).

What a bargain!!

 

What platform are you using for NAS?

Are you using same platform to upload to Amazon?

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xnappo

@@mediacowboy - yeah, I get that.  I like keeping them separate actually because it helps me keep track of what is already on a full backup drive (out of the system) and what is currently being backed up.  Maybe you have more sophisticated backup software that can grok that?

 

@@KarmaPolice - definitely interested.  A friend of mine told me about that, but I couldn't find it.  $60 for unlimited storage? Seems crazy!

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KarmaPolice

Very interested to hear more... being UK based I didn't see Amazon $60/unlimited before, but it seems they'll let me sign up (I have US amazon a/c).

What a bargain!!

 

What platform are you using for NAS?

Are you using same platform to upload to Amazon?

 

 

My NAS is an iomega 4TB... I do the sync to Amazon via the open source project acd_cli through a small linux box that i have that runs all the "software" (i hate running anything other than storage on my NAS)... everything in my environment is linux based (excluding my PC)... I'm not sure there is a windows port or equivalent to acd_cli and that's the real heart of the operation if I'm being honest, so this will probably be a linux only path... more details to come... i've started formatting the blog... will post it up as soon as i can, but will take a few days to get it all sorted and "other human readable" :)

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hijinx

My NAS is an iomega 4TB... I do the sync to Amazon via the open source project acd_cli through a small linux box that i have that runs all the "software" (i hate running anything other than storage on my NAS)... everything in my environment is linux based (excluding my PC)... I'm not sure there is a windows port or equivalent to acd_cli and that's the real heart of the operation if I'm being honest, so this will probably be a linux only path... more details to come... i've started formatting the blog... will post it up as soon as i can, but will take a few days to get it all sorted and "other human readable" :)

 

Aha :)

I though it might be acd_cli.

After I saw you post I got to googling and saw this post:

http://makeshift.ninja/unlimited-plex-media-server-using-amazons-unlimited-storage-backend-pt1.html

 

This is good for me since I can spin up a linux VM to do the work.

 

Looking fwd to your post.

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