FreeNAS 10 vs Xpenology

[BlizzardX]

So I'm considering replacing my DSM 5.2 virtualised build with FreeNAS 10. I'm after a supported system that isn't a 'hack' to make it work and that also has bitrot protection etc. built in to it.

My use cases will be general media storage as I use an alternative system for ESXi cluster.

Xpenology using DSM 5.2 has served me well, especially SHR2 with mixed sized drives... but now I don't need to worry about that, but as the system does look after my family photos I'd rather not let corruption occur in them.

Outside of Copy on Write and the checksumming using RaidZ(x), does FreeNAS have any benefits or disadvantages to Xpenology? Memory isn't issue and neither is vCPUs... i just want a reliable, speedy (WD red speeds e.g. 115MB/s+) storage system for general usage.

Thoughts?

 

[BlizzardX]

Thanks guys, I've used unraid in the past along with flexraid. I guess ultimately I'm after a filesystem that can automatically repair damaged files from the parity drives and I know ZFS has this but BTRFS is broken and not advised..... Can Unraid do this with BTRFS without Raid5/6 which it unraid doesn't care about?

Obviously Unraid only utilises a single drive for performance so its limited in comparison to freenas / xpenology but then as I hold my VMs on a SAN, I question do I really need an extensively fast storage array?

 

[BlizzardX]

FreeNAS 10 needs a few months really.

Looks like it doesn't it. Some of the simple features such as drive swap from the GUI needs resolving so you don't have to enter the CLI.

 

[BlizzardX]

So I ahve currently decided to use t-raid (flexraid) as my parity protected storage on a windows install. I don't need fast storage for VMs, this is just for general stuff... dual parity with the ability to add additional drives and also pull them when needed. Flexraid is also working on a striped parity system that can do software Raid at all levels including hybrid raid that I tested some time ago in an early beta build and it worked well... Just needed streamlining.

I've added a feature request for check summing and rebuilding from parity; there is already a plugin that can checksum so hopefully the dev can add it in to the system he created.

The whole system will be slower as data is not spanning the array like Raid 5/6 but I prefer windows and my xpenology was messing up vSphere HA on my servers and crashing the host.

 

[BlizzardX]

El Pew, what filesystem where you using on top of the NZFS disks and where you regularly running verify+ to compare DDU vs PPU? I agree that his attitude is quite often poor and the his responses disappointing, but so far its been ok (and I spent 8 more or so testing 'Standards' in a hybrid raid configuration). The interface is clunky but the tool tips have improved... I'd rather still use xpenology but its crashing the management of the host killing the vSAN and DRS, FreeNAS is something I struggle with as I do not tend to buy lots of drives at once and unraid, while similar to traid, doesn't do windows ACLs in a domain as well.

 

[BlizzardX]

I'm using ReFS v3 from Server 2016 essentials so will see how I get on. To be honest the performance is low, but for general storage speeds will be fine. I like the idea of ZFS, I really do, except I don't like the fact that to upgrade to larger drives will require purchasing enough replacements for the vdev to grow it bigger; costly for a home system. My preference is the MDADM route, e.g. Synology Hybrid Raid, or unraid/flexraid for the flexibility of additional drives without too much trouble.

 

[BlizzardX]

So to give context the system that the storage system runs on is a Xeon L5630 2.13ghz 4c/8t cpu, 32GB DDR3 Rdimm, 2 x LSI 9211-8i HBAs (IT mode), Supermicro 16 bay 3u chassis. It runs esxi 6.5 which is part of a cluster of 3 other machines. I was looking for local storage that would store my general files but not VMs, these run off local storage on the hosts themselves.

I tried FreeNAS Corral, Unraid, Flexraid (t-raid and the alpha version of standards) and Synology DSM 5.2 & 6.1 via the xpenology boot loaders.

FreeNAS Corral looked so much better than 9.xx and I really liked ZFS and the self healing of files, unfortunately I could not get my head around the concept of replacing a full vdev to increase storage capacity, e.g. to increase the 3 disk RaidZ1 vdev from 3tb to 4tb to gain an extra 2TB in NZ is around $700 NZD at the moment so not cost effective.

UNraid is always useful but performance is lacking and always found Active Directory membership cumbersome and clunky.

Flexraids applications where native windows so big plus for integration in to my home cluster but meh performance was lacking, interfaces where still poor and haven't improved and I still don't trust it.

Synology DSM - Hybrid Raid so easy to expand, great interface, easy to use, NOT native to PC and so hacked to worked, supports all network share types needed out of the box. Does not have bitrot protection although BTRFS is moving in the right direction.

As of yesterday I migrated all the files back in to DSM 6.1 using the latest loader and it works so well. Annoying that it doesn't have bitrot protection yet, and I'm not sure how synology will achieve that as they use BTRFS only as the filesystem and not as the replacement to MDADM for raid array creation so it cannot checksum at the drive level yet (not that I would trust BTRFS in Raid5 or 6 yet anyway!).

So back to almost square one, except this has given me the nudge to move from 5.2 to the latest version.

 

[BlizzardX]

This was one of the reasons why I didn't approach ZFS in the end. The whole concept is fine from a business approach where you have the money to buy the right capacity and setup as many vdevs as you want... the linux raid approach using MDADM is just simpler and with DSMs ability to create partitions to get a hybrid raid I find that much better for general use; I just wish that checksumming was built in to these other file systems and so was the automatic rebuild from parity.