Questions about my plans for a new FreeNAS setup
Hi everyone, I'm planning on setting up a new FreeNAS server with 6x 8TB drives. The drives I am looking at are:
2x Seagate ST8000NM0055
2x WD HUS728T8TALE6L4
2x Toshiba MG06ACA800E
The HBA I have ordered is: LSI SAS 9207-8i LSI00301
The reason for separate drives is that I don't want to risk having a bad batch of drives all from the same model/manufacturer, only having them fail within days/weeks of each other (I've heard horror stories where this happened). I was planning on doing the freenas install on a cheap consumer level SSD. The above mentioned drives would be setup in a raidz2 configuration. It will be running on a xeon with 24gb of ECC ram. All I will be using this server for is streaming media over my lan. I'll probably run a nextcloud and syncthing installation along with 2-3 extra VMs.
Questions:
The Toshiba spec sheet doesn't say either: CMR/PMR or SMR, does someone have more info confirming these toshiba drives won't be SMR?
Do I need to do firmware updates to the LSI card?
Will I have problems choosing these 512e models when I go to swap in newer native 4kb drives in the future? Do I have to do something specific at the vdev/pool creation time to ensure that I can replace drives in the future with native 4kb drives to not incur a performance hit or is this a non issue with standard FreeNas options?
Am I going to have any performance problems that will not allow me to saturate my internal 1gbit connection? Should I be looking to invest in a SSD with powerloss protection like the seagate XA240ME10003 ZIL/SLOG? Can I buy one afterwards and add it if I identify performance issues?
Should I consider a buying a UPS for the server, if so: which brands work with FreeNAS plugins so that the server will shut itself down automatically if a power outage happens?
I am looking forward to TrueNAS v12 and see that the encryption will switch from the GELI encryption to native openZFS 2.0 encryption. If I encrypt the drives now with GELI, can I switch that to the native openZFS 2.0 encryption one drive at a time later on or do I have to leave the disks unencrypted for now? Is there anything I forgot that I need to pay attention to before I make the final purchases?
Thanks for your help!
Posted Apr 20, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC · edited
Why three brands and models? Why not 6x of one?
That's not how one resolves this.
Get 2x of the same make and model either from separate vendors or bought at different times.
You're going to have issues with mixed drives as the size won't be exactly the same.
Can you elaborate on this? Is there a way around it while still using drives from differing manufacturers?
You're increasing complexity and risk by using different manufacturers. There's little to gain by doing so.
It's in your best interest to get none SMR drives of all the same make/model.