On Nov 18, 2015, at 11:04 AM, Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at gmail.com> wrote:> > On 11/18/2015 07:31 AM, Tim Evans wrote: >> Would like to hear recommendations here. > > https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/For those who don?t know why you?d pay $1000 for a diskless 4-bay NAS box when there are $300-500 boxes that are superficially similar from QNAP, Synology, and others: - ZFS. Modern cheap NAS boxes have gained some ZFS-like features (online expansion and such) but they?re still not ZFS. - FreeNAS. Many low-end NASes use proprietary or rebadged ODM management software that barely scrapes by in terms of features and support, whereas FreeNAS has a long-standing open source developer community behind it. - Much bigger CPU than is typical for the low-end NAS boxes. Many low-end NAS boxes have gigabit Ethernet ports, but if you don?t put enough CPU grunt behind that port, you can?t fill it. As a rule, you need at least 1 GHz of CPU to fill a gigabit pipe. - Much more RAM than in low-end NAS boxes. Partly this is because ZFS (the storage subsystem for FreeNAS) is a RAM-hungry pig, but the benefit you get from that is that more of your data is in RAM, so even if your spindles aren?t fast enough to fill the gigabit pipe, data from cache can fill it. - L2ARC and ZIL upgrade options, which are intermediary caches between RAM and disk. Again, this helps you to keep that gigabit pipe full. - They?re serious server-grade machines, not borderline flimsy boxes competing largely on price. Built in and supported from Silicon Valley, not China. :) - iXsystems sponsors FreeNAS and FreeBSD (via PC-BSD) developers. Does your alternative choice of NAS provider sponsor open source developers? - Those latter two points mean you can actually call them and get someone on the phone who knows what they?re talking about. The last time my Lacie NAS choked, I had to just nuke it and re-mirror all the data. I don?t have a FreeNAS mini, and I have never used one. But, I?ve been lusting after them for some time now. Next time one of my NASes dies, one of these is going to be high on the list of choices for replacement.
Once upon a time, Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> said:> - They?re serious server-grade machines, not borderline flimsy boxes competing largely on price. Built in and supported from Silicon Valley, not China. :)iXsystems sells rebadged SuperMicro stuff, nothing special (not made in Silicon Valley). We bought an iXsystems TrueNAS (commercial version of FreeNAS + "supported" hardware) system at $DAYJOB about 2 years ago, with the dual-node "HA" setup, and it was not a pleasant experience. Over the first 6 months or so, our longest functioning uptime was about 10 days. NFS would run and then just stop serving (no errors or anything). Eventually, iX found and fixed a FreeBSD kernel NFS bug, but it was a painful experience. Then, early this year, we had a node fail, and it took them almost a month to get us a replacement. Their idea of HA is to monitor the ethernet links, not the services; even though we have multiple links in a LAG, if one drops, the node fails over (and now we're having trouble with CentOS 7 NFS clients when the TrueNAS has a failover). When we had NFS problems, we had to monitor that externally and manually trigger a failover. Failover consists of "reboot the active node"; there's no graceful cluster tool (such as Pacemaker on Linux). And today, when trying to open a ticket, their website is broken because one of their DNS servers is returning 10.0.0.240 for part of their website (where the CSS is served). -- Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>
On 11/18/2015 11:16 AM, Chris Adams wrote:> Once upon a time, Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> said: >> - They?re serious server-grade machines, not borderline flimsy boxes competing largely on price. Built in and supported from Silicon Valley, not China. :) > iXsystems sells rebadged SuperMicro stuff, nothing special (not made in > Silicon Valley).They aren't fabbed there, but the assembly is done in the USA. We used the mini extensively in my previous position, managing IT for a few dozen small businesses. As backup systems go, it was very reliable. We didn't use them as servers, though.
On Nov 18, 2015, at 12:16 PM, Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net> wrote:> > Once upon a time, Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> said: >> - They?re serious server-grade machines, not borderline flimsy boxes competing largely on price. Built in and supported from Silicon Valley, not China. :) > > iXsystems sells rebadged SuperMicro stuff, nothing special (not made in > Silicon Valley).Good to know, though I must say, the SuperMicro stuff I?ve used is a cut above typical desktop PC or commodity grade hardware. Not on par with super high end stuff, but well above average.> iX found and fixed a FreeBSD kernel NFS bug, but it was a > painful experience.I see that story in the exact opposite way: iXsystems found and fixed the problem, expending heroic levels of effort to do so. By contrast, I?ve had several $300-500 NASes become unmountable for one reason or another, and the vendor was no use *at all* in getting it remounted. I had to rebuild the NAS from backups each time. It?s rather annoying to buy a NAS, then later realize you need to buy *another* NAS as a mirror in case the first one roaches itself. Isn?t that what redundant storage is supposed to avoid? Meanwhile, I?ve never had a ZFS pool become unmountable, even when the disk enclosure hardware was failing underneath it.> Then, early this year, we had a node fail, and it took them almost a > month to get us a replacement.That?s not good. But have you gotten better turn time from the $300-500 NAS providers for the same service? Did you opt for advance replacement, and if not, why not?> Their idea of HA is to monitor the ethernet links, not the services;Do the $300-500 NAS boxes even try to do HA failover?> even though we have multiple links in a LAGI?ve also had trouble with FreeBSD?s lagg feature. Fortunately, my use case allowed me to switch to a round-robin DNS based load balancing scheme instead. I don?t think you can do that with NFS, by its nature.> And today, when trying to open a ticket, their website is broken because > one of their DNS servers is returning 10.0.0.240 for part of their > website (where the CSS is served).Yes, I noticed their site was running awfully slowly. Embarrassing, but I don?t see what it has to do with the quality of their FreeNAS boxes.