FreeNAS vs Openfiler dilemma

[Scott Salisbury]

Hey all,

Got myself into a bit of a pickle, currently working to build myself a home NAS solution.

Setup:
- HP Proliant Microserver N40L
- 8GB RAM
- 4x 2TB WD20EAR

I've tried both FreeNAS (Raidz1) and Openfiler (Software RAID 5) and I really like them both for different reasons and I can't decided which one to go for.

I'm currently swaying towards Openfiler because write speeds over CIFs are better than FreeNAS (85mbs vs 55mbs), but performance isn't such a game changer (but would be nice).

I don't know much about raid, but I hear people talking about a raid 5 write hole, does this still exist in software raid on something like openfiler?

I may also use my set up as a iSCSI target for my other ESXI host, but I've not done this before so not sure yet (still learning).

These are my findings after some research:

FreeNAS 8:

PROS
- Uses ZFS (apparently the mutts nuts)
- RaidZ (is a bit like Raid5 without 'write hole' issue)
- Faster webgui when installed on usb drive
- More active community

CONS
- Slower write performance
- Less 'finished' product feeling
- Not as pretty webgui
- Rumours of instability despite people worshipping ZFS like it is god


Openfiler 2.99
PROS
- Faster write performance
- Prettier easy to use webgui
- Feels/looks reliable and a bit more trustworthy

CONS
- Less active community
- Potential raid 5 'write hole'?
- Slower webgui installed on usb flash

So those are my findings, but I can't come to a decision. I will be backing up my most important data to a cloud backup service in addition to this set up.

Another option would be to not use raid, or use a different raid option but I feel raid5 fits my needs quite well. Redundancy isn't so important to me that I need to sacrifice even more storage.

Is there anyone who is able to offer an option or thoughts?

Thanks in advance,
Scott.

 

[Scott Salisbury]

Cheers for the reply, was hoping someone would say something like that

'RAID5 write hole' = Using Wikipedia as a primary reference?

IMO it isn't something you need to be worrying about.

As it happens, yes. That was the first place I noticed that, however I've seen many other blog posts, forums posts that have also mentioned it in an attempt to discourage using raid5 *shrug*.

Cheers.