Mixed Drives File Server With Redundancy

[Collider]

I have a bunch of mixed drives that I would like to re-use in a File Server build. I would like to have some redundancy so that if 1 drive fails I can easily replace it without loosing data.

I have a spare DELL T3500 with a 6 core Xeon and a bunch of ram that I plan on using for this.

Would like some recommendations on which OS to use, storage system, raid type etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If they are currently different sizes, or you might be adding drives in the future to the pool, consider unRAID. (Search for "unraid")

 

[Charlie22911]

I second unraid, I’ve got ongoing personal experience with it.

 

[mxnerd]

Also recommend unRAID. License for life.

Xeon 5600 series consume a lot of energy however. Don't think it's good for 24/7 operation and your utility bill.

 

[Collider]

Thanks for replies. So far I'm looking into Unraid and Windows Server Storage Spaces.

Just curious what are your opinions about FreeNas? Or will it not support mixed drives?

 

[Collider]

Also recommend unRAID. License for life.

Xeon 5600 series consume a lot of energy however. Don't think it's good for 24/7 operation and your utility bill.

Yeah I know Xeons are a bit of power hogs. But I already have the hardware available sitting around. I'll be using a Xeon L5638 which is 60w TDP, about the lowest item from the chart you provided.

What power efficient yet capable CPU would you recommend ?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Thanks for replies. So far I'm looking into Unraid and Windows Server Storage Spaces.

Just curious what are your opinions about FreeNas? Or will it not support mixed drives?

"Support" is a wide range. ZFS will limit disk usage to the smallest capacity disk across all drives in the vdev, so ZFS will not give you good utilization (if you put a 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB disk in a RAIDZ array, all disks will be limited to 500GB in size).

If you're using whatever disks you can scrounge but still want redundancy, then you don't was disk-level redundancy. You want file level redundancy. unRAID is great for this purpose.

 

[Billy Tallis]

If you're using whatever disks you can scrounge but still want redundancy, then you don't was disk-level redundancy. You want file level redundancy. unRAID is great for this purpose.

Alternatively, BTRFS RAID 1 on Linux works fine. BTRFS doesn't have reliable RAID5 or RAID6 modes, but in RAID1 it has all of the flexibility that ZFS lacks, so you can give it a pile of drives of varying sizes and it will arrange the data to always tolerate a single-drive failure while usually giving you more usable space than a ZFS RAID1 would.

 

[Collider]

Quick update on this.

Since this post I decided to test Storage Spaces and UnRaid.

Storage Spaces reactions:
- Used Windows Server 2019
- Drive setup was problematic from the start, I could not create mirror or parity arrays from GUI at all, it kept giving me cryptic errors which had to be Googled and researched
- in the end I had to use a PowerShell script to create the array, it turned out that GUI has a bug providing incorrect parameters
- Parity performance was terrible, something like ~15Mb/s
- Storage allocation was also weird, I had 3 drives in the array with total of 1.16TB, but once array was created only ~300GB were usable
- Also copying a 15GB file resulted in space filling up 3-4x of the file size

UnRaid reactions:
- Easy and quick install. Took me a little bit to understand that the whole OS lives on USB and is actually loaded into RAM. Also not being *nix guy I was a bit confused by the initial login screen and root login, but other than that pretty smooth for 1st time OS install
- Extremely intuitive UI, the entire OS is built with storage in mind, so its really quick to get things setup
- After install 5 min later I had my array up and running with shares available on the network to my Windows & Mac machines - it just works
- 1 minor issue is that I need to find how to install GPU drivers for the AMD Fire GPU I'm using, since w/o drivers it consumes more watts and runs really hot

I totally have my mind set on going with UnRaid due to its simplicity and flexibility. I like how shares function, I can separate my data by drives if needed. Also a big + is that data is accessible outside the array. Thanks to everyone on this thread that pointed me towards choosing UnRaid.

Now being a Windows guy, I'm tempted to virtualize UnRaid and run it as guest inside Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019 host. I feel it would give me a bit more flexibility. For that I would need to have USB pass-through setup, which looks possible. One of the reasons for doing would be if GPU driver is not available for UnRaid. Please feel free to critique this approach if there are some negative side effects.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I'm not surprised you had difficulty there. Windows Storage Spaces is a commercial level software defined storage system. As you mentioned in your OP, you're not running hardware, nor desiring configuration that ensures resiliency of data, but rather trying to maximize storage space. Most business and enterprise storage systems are designed with the exact opposite in mind.

The 300 GB turnout would depend on the size of your drives, the arrangement of your Storage Spaces columns, and the configuration of your resiliency.

For the GPU in unRAID, unless you plan to troubleshoot it, you don't even need it. You could just remove it (with it powered off of course). It will boot headless just fine.

Putting unRAID in Hyper-V is possible, but you're only complicating matters. The iGPU in a CPU should be supported just fine in unRAID. You can add virtual disks to unRAID but then you're hiding SMART data and other disk metrics from unRAID. If Hyper-V needs patched you're bringing down storage to do it.

That being said, you can do it. It's been popular in the ZFS world to virtualize OmniOS and similar systems on ESXi for quite some time. But that's mainly because BSD can have some pretty substantial limitations on the hardware it supports out of the box.

unRAID is based on Linux (Slackware specifically) so it's got some pretty decent compatibility.

Personally, I wouldn't virtualize it unless you've got a list of eccentric hardware that wouldn't be compatible out of the box with Linux.

For the GPU problem specifically, I would personally just get a cheap, basic GPU, since the whole idea is low power (and low requirements).

 

[Collider]

@thecoolnessrune thanks for a thoughtful response.

I'm running an x58 motherboard, so iGPU isn't really an option. I have a spare FirePro 2260 which is pretty low power at 15W TDP. AMD has Linux drivers available for it, not sure if I can install them on UnRaid, need to look into that.

Another reason for Windows host is to run SpeedFan to minimize fan noise.

Hiding SMART data from UnRaid sounds like a big trade off - what features / functionality would I miss out on?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

If you're losing key functionality to the unRAID OS then you could certainly make a use case for virtualizing it. But it's an uphill battle with additional support. As both Jon and Tom at unRAID stated in the past "We are headed in a direction with unRAID operating as a host, not a guest."

I think by now, USB passthrough (probably) works correctly, and you could assign your HBA or disk controller hopefully directly to the VM so that unRAID can maintain control of the connected drives. Depending on your free time there's little harm in giving it a try and seeing if it works.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah I know Xeons are a bit of power hogs. But I already have the hardware available sitting around. I'll be using a Xeon L5638 which is 60w TDP, about the lowest item from the chart you provided.

What power efficient yet capable CPU would you recommend ?

It's not just the CPU TDP, what really matters is idle state support and platform power. A Haswell-era >95w TDP chip will use less power than the L5638 because 90% of the time it's idle, and it idles at 2w instead of the 10w that the L5638 sits at. The motherboard chipsets and other peripherals are also more power-efficient.

w/r/t the idea of virtualizing your unRAID rig in hyper-V; unRAID should at least support the basic console output (generic VGA mode) that you'll need to get your system set up with whatever GPU you've got in it. So I wouldn't worry about GPU support, really, since it's a system that's designed to be administered remotely anyway. If you do a VM, you'll need to be using PCI passthrough to pass your HBAs through to the VM, not USB passthrough. (Unless all your hard drives are USB devices... which is frightening for other reasons.)