Build Your Own NAS (BYON)

[quekky]

interesting...

can you help to test something out? take out the 3 hdd and plug it back in a different order, see if freenas can still detect the data or not

 

[Tears4Fears]

interesting...

can you help to test something out? take out the 3 hdd and plug it back in a different order, see if freenas can still detect the data or not

It is able to. When I install it on the AMD board, i anyhow plug in the sata. It is definitely not in sequence / order. FreeNAS is very versatile.

 

[Tears4Fears]

My plan is to post Setup 2 Synology test results this morning.

However, I am quite frustrated that the draft was overwriten by another and it undo 4 hours of my work. I even check through my cache but it says invalid security token. This is the 2nd time it has happened using blogger. Sian 1/2. :

 

[coyote]

interesting...

can you help to test something out? take out the 3 hdd and plug it back in a different order, see if freenas can still detect the data or not

Linux uses UUID to identify disks. It does not matter which data port you attach it to.

 

[Tears4Fears]

Linux uses UUID to identify disks. It does not matter which data port you attach it to.

We are on the subject of Linux LVM right?
You sure about this?
I recalled reading on some Synology threads that migrating from diskstation to diskstation, the order of HDD needs to be in sequence.
Maybe some Synology owner can share their experience?

 

[ArcticCheetah]

My NAS is just my Router running OpenWRT attach to a harddisk.
Moves data around wirelessly at ~2MB/s good enough for me.
I made the setup to reduce power consumption and the Router idles the harddisk to save power when not in use.
It is a poor man's NAS.

 

[quekky]

We are on the subject of Linux LVM right?
You sure about this?
I recalled reading on some Synology threads that migrating from diskstation to diskstation, the order of HDD needs to be in sequence.
Maybe some Synology owner can share their experience?

I've tested using my synology, it's using linux LVM therefore it depends on the UUID as well. And I can plug in any sequence or even any drive bay and it'll auto-mount back

 

[Tears4Fears]

I've tested using my synology, it's using linux LVM therefore it depends on the UUID as well. And I can plug in any sequence or even any drive bay and it'll auto-mount back

Hmmm...my memories did not served me wrong.

Moving Hard Disks to the Target DiskStation

1. Remove the temporary hard disk from the target DiskStation (make sure the power is off).
2. Remove the hard disks from the source DiskStation and install them into the target DiskStation. Hard disks must be installed in the same order as they were installed in the source DiskStation. For details regarding hard disk slot numbering, please refer to the Quick Installation Guide that came with your DiskStation, or try checking on the hard disk slots of your device.
3. Start up your DiskStation. It should function normally now.

Source from Synology Support Page

 

[bravobb]

My own experience with UNRAID, since i noticed UNRAID was mentioned in this thread but not much details given.

When one of my disk having disk error, have to replace the faulty HDD and re-run parity check.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45998873/unraid_err.JPG

Due to my mistake, i replaced the parity HDD instead of the faulty HDD first, and end up losing one HDD of the data... but at least the rest of the data is intact.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45998873/unraid_err2.JPG

That is the power of UNRAID, even if you do stupid thing like what i did, you will not lose 100% data.

Paying around $100 for a 24 HDD license is very worth it in my opinion.

 

[Tears4Fears]

Sorry for the delay. I am exhausted.

2nd setup - Synology DSM testing results are out!
It has three parts; Got results, got picture, got video, WE GOT TALK!!!
No good you slap me.

3.3.1 Synology DSM Performance Test
3.3.2 Synology DSM Functionality Test
3.3.3 Synology DSM Plex Transcoding Test

I will try to post U-NAS test results tomorrow night and head for the finishing line.

 

[Tears4Fears]

My own experience with UNRAID, since i noticed UNRAID was mentioned in this thread but not much details given.

When one of my disk having disk error, have to replace the faulty HDD and re-run parity check.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45998873/unraid_err.JPG

Due to my mistake, i replaced the parity HDD instead of the faulty HDD first, and end up losing one HDD of the data... but at least the rest of the data is intact.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45998873/unraid_err2.JPG

That is the power of UNRAID, even if you do stupid thing like what i did, you will not lose 100% data.

Paying around $100 for a 24 HDD license is very worth it in my opinion.

Thanks for sharing your UnRAID experience. Yes, it interest me a lot but concurrently, I have no more steam to test and reivew another setup. Testing and documenting are very time consuming tasks.

Your NAS is RAID 5? Can share your unRAID write/read speed and performance?

 

[quekky]

Hmmm...my memories did not served me wrong.

Moving Hard Disks to the Target DiskStation

1. Remove the temporary hard disk from the target DiskStation (make sure the power is off).
2. Remove the hard disks from the source DiskStation and install them into the target DiskStation. Hard disks must be installed in the same order as they were installed in the source DiskStation. For details regarding hard disk slot numbering, please refer to the Quick Installation Guide that came with your DiskStation, or try checking on the hard disk slots of your device.
3. Start up your DiskStation. It should function normally now.

Source from Synology Support Page

maybe as a safety precaution, but as i've tested out it uses UUID and doesn't really matter. since you have it running you can try it out too

 

[Tears4Fears]

maybe as a safety precaution, but as i've tested out it uses UUID and doesn't really matter. since you have it running you can try it out too

Sure. I will try that if opportunity rises.

 

[bravobb]

Thanks for sharing your UnRAID experience. Yes, it interest me a lot but concurrently, I have no more steam to test and reivew another setup. Testing and documenting are very time consuming tasks.

Your NAS is RAID 5? Can share your unRAID write/read speed and performance?

It is not RAID5, thus it is called UNRAID... It is more like JUMBO with a parity disk for data recovery in case of a single disk failure. Multiple disks failure is not recoverable so you lose those data on the failure disks only, other disks are not affected and data are still intact. Another good things about JUMBO is that you can combine different HDD size together, unlike RAID5 which require all the HDD to be of the same size.
Read/Write is not impressive, only around 20MB/s, so it is good for storage and not suitable to run software from it which may require fast transfer speed.

Hope these information serve you and the rest well.

 

[Tears4Fears]

3rd setup - U-NAS testing results are out!

3.4.1 U-NAS Performance Test
3.4.2 U-NAS Functionality Test

I will post Benchmark Charts soon.

 

[lycheas]

Hi,

Can you give some advice to me? I am not sure why the write speed is terrible, at 8 MB/s, it takes an hour to transfer 8 GB of files to FreeNAS. Or the speed is in range with what I have setup?

Setup
1. Celeron 1610
2. 16 GB DDR3 RAM
3. 6 x 2 TB HDD, 1 x 500GB HDD
- 2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda
- 2 x 2TB WD Green
- 1 x 2TB Hitachi Deskstar
- 1 x 500GB Seagate Barracuda
4. RAID-Z2
5. Asus P8H77I
6. Realtek 10Ge LAN
7. SMB/CIFS connected to Windows 7 client

I am using the 500 GB to build up the array first. Create the space and transfer the files from the last 2TB Hitachi HDD to the array. Replace the 500 GB with the 2 TB and resilver the array and expand zfs after that.

 

[Tears4Fears]

Hi,

Can you give some advice to me? I am not sure why the write speed is terrible, at 8 MB/s, it takes an hour to transfer 8 GB of files to FreeNAS. Or the speed is in range with what I have setup?

Setup
1. Celeron 1610
2. 16 GB DDR3 RAM
3. 6 x 2 TB HDD, 1 x 500GB HDD
- 2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda
- 2 x 2TB WD Green
- 1 x 2TB Hitachi Deskstar
- 1 x 500GB Seagate Barracuda
4. RAID-Z2
5. Asus P8H77I
6. Realtek 10Ge LAN
7. SMB/CIFS connected to Windows 7 client

I am using the 500 GB to build up the array first. Create the space and transfer the files from the last 2TB Hitachi HDD to the array. Replace the 500 GB with the 2 TB and resilver the array and expand zfs after that.

The speed certainly don't look right.
I wanted to help but I am no FreeNAS guru.
It might be the NIC.
You can get more help here.

 

[Tears4Fears]

My NAS is just my Router running OpenWRT attach to a harddisk.
Moves data around wirelessly at ~2MB/s good enough for me.
I made the setup to reduce power consumption and the Router idles the harddisk to save power when not in use.
It is a poor man's NAS.

There's no RAID, my friend says it's a file server. Just kidding.

It is not RAID5, thus it is called UNRAID... It is more like JUMBO with a parity disk for data recovery in case of a single disk failure. Multiple disks failure is not recoverable so you lose those data on the failure disks only, other disks are not affected and data are still intact. Another good things about JUMBO is that you can combine different HDD size together, unlike RAID5 which require all the HDD to be of the same size.
Read/Write is not impressive, only around 20MB/s, so it is good for storage and not suitable to run software from it which may require fast transfer speed.

Hope these information serve you and the rest well.

The concept of JUMBO seems very similar to JBOD.
I recalled that Microsoft also offers similar RAID, forgotten the name.
Thanks for sharing unRAID experience, i will consider it.

 

[Tears4Fears]

Added a new post for another NAS build from a fellow reader from VRZ.

You can now send in details of your own NAS build and I'll share with everyone on the blog. It will be a nice database for everyone.

 

[Tears4Fears]

I've finally completed BYON including the documentations.

Here are the final 3 posts.

3.5.1 CIFS Benchmarks
3.5.2 iSCSI Benchmarks
3.6 Summary

Last but not least, please participate in this poll for two short questions related to BYON.

3.7 BYON Poll