From 094dd82785f72019feaee0b12c963a7034e0f7b0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Wesley Moore Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:14:40 +1100 Subject: [PATCH] First draft of has post --- .../2011/12/freebsd-zfs-powered-nas.html | 90 ++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 86 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/technical/2011/12/freebsd-zfs-powered-nas.html b/content/technical/2011/12/freebsd-zfs-powered-nas.html index 66987cd..14f529f 100644 --- a/content/technical/2011/12/freebsd-zfs-powered-nas.html +++ b/content/technical/2011/12/freebsd-zfs-powered-nas.html @@ -1,4 +1,86 @@ -Recently the Time Machine drive on my Mac Pro started to randomly dissappear -and Mac OS X would say that I had removed it improperly, which was not true -given it was an internal drive. I'd seen this behaviour before and in that -case it resulted in the drive being replacesd +TODO: Add photos + +Recently the Time Machine drive on my Mac Pro started to randomly +disappear and Mac OS X would say that I had removed it improperly, +which was not true given it was an internal drive still inside the +machine. + +I'd seen this behaviour before and in that case it resulted in the drive +being replaced due to its inability to complete a short S.M.A.R.T. +scan. This drive (also a Samsung) was suffering a similar problem except +that initiating the S.M.A.R.T. scan would actually cause it to disappear +from the SATA bus. A check on the Samsung site showed that the drive was +out of warranty so I was up for a replacement. + +The Mac Pro wasn't getting used for much since I got a i7 powered Mac Book Pro. +Its main duties involved storing my iTunes library, Aperture library and +running my weather logger. It wasn't exactly a very energy efficient machine +to run all the time. It would in fact keep the study warm overnight when the +door was closed. + +There was also a problem with replacing the failing drive: I couldn't afford +to do so. So I decided to move the weather logging to my [ALIX board][alix] +and sell the Mac Pro to fund building a home NAS. I was able to sell the +Mac Pro very quickly on eBay for $1500 but gave myself a budget of $1000 for +the NAS. I wanted the NAS to have reliable redundant storage, which for me +meant [ZFS]. This implied the new machine would need to run one of [Solaris], +[Illumos], [FreeBSD], [FreeNAS] or [SmartOS]. The requirement to run one of +these OS's ruled out an off the shelf NAS appliance. + +[ZFS]: TODO +[alix]: TODO +[Solaris]: TODO +[Illumos]: TODO +[FreeBSD]: TODO +[SmartOS]: TODO + +I did a lot of research into different ways to build the machine and +tried out all the OS options in virtual machines. I considered using +basic PC hardware, MiniITX, HP MicroServer, etc. Each had its own pros +and cons. The basic PC approach was possibly the cheapest but it was the +largest. MiniITX was more expensive and choice of multi hard drive bay +cases were limited. I ended up settling on the [HP Proliant MicroServer] +running FreeBSD. + +[microserver]: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/hk/en/sm/WF06b/15351-15351-4237916-4237917-4237917-4248009-5163345.html + +The MicroSever is a neat little unit. It uses a low poert dual core AMD +Turion II CPU and comes with 2Gb ECC RAM and a 250Gb HD. I has 4 non-hot +swappable hard drive bays all packaged up in a squat little box. I ordered +mine with an extra 2Gb or RAM as ZFS likes to have plenty of RAM available +to run well. + +During my reesarch hard drive prices sky rocketed due to the floods +in Thailand, however I was able to get some at pre-flood prices from +[ht.com.au][ht]. They have since put the price up $40 (TODO) and placed order +limits on them, so I got in at the right time. + +For the drives I chose 2Tb Seagate Barracuda Green's. They feature SATA 3 +and a 64Mb cache and run at the atypical 5900RPM. These drives seemed to be +a good balance across energy efficiency, noise, performance and price. + +[ht]: http://ht.com.au/ + +The final parts list ended up being the rater diminuative: + +* 1 × HP MicroServer (658553-371) + 2Gb extra RAM $336.82 +* 3 × 2Tb Seagate Barracuda Green Hard Drives $394.85 + +The total cost ended up being $731.67, healthily under budget. + +Installng FreeBSD and setting up the ZFS pool was very +straightforward. I'm running the drives in a RAIDZ configuration, +giving 3.6Tb of usable storage. I currently have two ZFS filsystems +on that. One in a normal configuration and the other for photos with +`copies=2` set. I plan to try out enabling ZFS deduplication on the +former filesystem soon. + +So the system all ran well for a few days however on the forth day one of +the brand new drives failed and started making a terrible clicking, beeping +noise. Fortunately HT replaced it very promptly and the replacement has +been running fine since. During the time the failed drive was out for +replacement the ZFS pool continued to run fine in its degraded state, with +no data loss. Once the new drive was installed it was a simple matter of +issuing `zfs replace ada1` and it began the process of resilvering the data +onto the new drive and all it has been running well since. +