[Feedback wanted] OS for my AIO Homeserver [SOLVED] recovery of a crahed XPEnology Volume
- Thread starter Kristian
- Start date
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I have 32 GB at hand, so that would be okay with performance then.
When you say easy to manage: Are you saying more easy then mdadm? Because when I wasn't able to setup the array and seeing all the commands you entered: I am pretty shure I will never be finished with that.
So let me summarize:
So its either ZFS with FreeNAS (hoping I can manage that) or
OMV with SnapRAID
FreeNAS with ZFS
+ is better on the performance side,
+ rock solid storage for our data
- No HDD spin down possible, so server will draw 200w 24/7
OMV with aufs + snapraid
+ energy saving possible
+ solid storage for our data
- performance is disk speed (is it?)
The best of both worlds could be archived with nearly any Linux distro, but that seems to be way to advanced for me.
Running FreeNAS or OMV in HyperV is not a good idea.
Running both in ESXi is not possible because the Avotons lack VT-d
I think the new OS of my AIO will be OMV then.
Mainly because I hope to recover some more files and I can't afford the extra spinners I would need to empty all my HDDs to start from scratch all at one.
Have to start with a small array and then start moving my files to the new array to then expand the array
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A lot of those commands you saw me enter were just to partition the disks and check the health of the array after I made it (oh, and I added the filesystem on top of the array)
SnapRAID doesn't limit you to single disk speeds, but the pooling solutions do (AuFS/mhddfs). You can manually write to as many disks at the same time as you'd like, so you can achieve far greater than gigabit speeds this way. I love that individual disks can be spun up to read media, this saves A LOT of power if you have multiple spindles (you do). SnapRAID is also very solid and provides checksumming to prevent bitrot like ZFS does.
My advice, setup a few of these in Virtualbox with some 5GB disks and try them out. Also, try to remove disks and see how replacing a disk goes (because disks will fail at some point).
Another option would be to use Ubuntu + Gea's Napp-it GUI to manage ZFS as well. This way you would have a web GUI to manage the array, file shares, etc. and have a full Linux distro (OMV is Debian, so that's a full distro as well).
VT-d and pass-through the whole storage (HBA+disks) is the professional way for a storage VM.
Physical RDM (raw disk mapping) is another option with ESXi that works without vt-d
Beside Linux and BSD variants, you may consider a Solaris/ OmniOS based storage as well.
They offer some advantages regarding ZFS and SMB.
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Of course RDM would be possible. I tried to do that with ESXi 5.0 2 years ago (when our twins were still - lets say - in delivery) and I had super HowTos (at least that's what I thought) and I didn't manage to do it for weeks(!) until I quit.
No matter what I did: I always failed at the "vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST3000VX0002D1CU166__________________________________" part.
So that was the point when I accepted that
- I am late to the Linux party and
- spent the years that my brain was able to learn something
* using a windows machine
* playing world of warcraft and
- that I am apparently
* to stupid or
* impatient
* or both.
And that is what's actually limiting me.
I would like to learn and tinker around, but time is limited.
When I try to learn something about SnapRAID with aufs
or OmniOS or Snap-it
and all the tutorials I get afraid first of all and I am asking myself:
how should I manage to do that with 2 hours of free time a day and a wife that would like to spend the evenings with me?
Actually my wife already makes fun of me saying: Since 2009 every other week the "server" is down and you are mad because of it.
Why don't you sell it all on eBay and live a happy life.
After the XPEnology experience (that was a nice one throughout the last 6 months)
I think she could be right.
Buy a dropbox 1TB account for the photos.
Buy amazon prime, Netflix, Sky, HBO and whatnot and I would be probably cheaper off.
So OMV or FreeNAS seem to be the only appliances (if that's what they are called)
that can be set up in a reasonable amount of time.
No matter what I did: I always failed at the "vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST3000VX0002D1CU166__________________________________" part.
So that was the point when I accepted that
- I am late to the Linux party and
- spent the years that my brain was able to learn something
* using a windows machine
* playing world of warcraft and
- that I am apparently
* to stupid or
* impatient
* or both.
And that is what's actually limiting me.
I would like to learn and tinker around, but time is limited.
When I try to learn something about SnapRAID with aufs
or OmniOS or Snap-it
and all the tutorials I get afraid first of all and I am asking myself:
how should I manage to do that with 2 hours of free time a day and a wife that would like to spend the evenings with me?
Actually my wife already makes fun of me saying: Since 2009 every other week the "server" is down and you are mad because of it.
Why don't you sell it all on eBay and live a happy life.
After the XPEnology experience (that was a nice one throughout the last 6 months)
I think she could be right.
Buy a dropbox 1TB account for the photos.
Buy amazon prime, Netflix, Sky, HBO and whatnot and I would be probably cheaper off.
So OMV or FreeNAS seem to be the only appliances (if that's what they are called)
that can be set up in a reasonable amount of time.
If you are that strapped for time and you don't have the time/desire to learn how to run all of these things, I think you may be better off to sell off your hardware and just go the managed services route. You can't get back time lost with your family and children when they are small.
Or go with something that is completely managed that has service if something goes wrong (Synology, QNAP, iXSystems FreeNAS, etc.)
That being said, if you are willing and able to invest the time, having your own server can be extremely stable and a great way to store your files and have access to all your content, whenever you would like, without restrictions. If you want help trying to setup a good system going forward, let me know. But, as you said, even if the foundation is setup correctly, it's still up to you to manage it going forward, so if something goes wrong, you need to understand how it works.
I think I am to stubborn to quit.
And I have spend too much money (but not enough to buy a synology device that is big enough for my need) for server equipment.
So let me recover from this experience and empty the 4TB array and look after my files.
Could take some weeks I think to assess the damage...
I will try to do some "research" or better my homework, so I know what I want and get back to you. Thank you all so much