Storage Server advice

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Quickbeam

New Member
Dec 18, 2015
3
0
1
35
Hey guys,

new to the forum, im not sure if this the correct place to post this, i think i want to use ZFS maybe via freenas



so my problem is i have homelab of two servers in different locations which i would like to mirror via wan ( need advice on the best way to do this, hopefully securely)

the hardware is as follows i have a HP Ml150 gen6 DP with 48gb of memory and a highpoint rocketRAID 2720 with four 5TB drives in raid 0, this server is currently running server 2012r2 standard with Hyper-v enabled running some light game server VM's ( im also open for advice on "better" options ) installed is on a 120gb SSD

next up i have a HP microserver gen8 with a e3-1230v2 with only 8gb of memory using the onboard b120i also running raid 0 with windows server 2012R2 datacenter installed on a 120gb SSD

now as for the storage the servers basically already have a mirrored copy of what is mostly media like TVshow and movies backups ripped from dvd and blurays, some office files from my wifes business and the VM's from the game servers i host for friends and family
one of the servers uses plex to push the media to an xbox but the other uses simple SMB shares to a linux media player

currently both servers uses about 11TB of data, and i don't really know what my best option for having them sync'd would be,

just trying to think of information that could help in recommending options or products
the internet connections for both sites are 300/50mbits with 1terabyte quota (thanks aussie net)

i guess at some point later on next year i plan on upgrading the microserver to one of them fancy xeon d SOC's
the memory restrictions are preventing me from using it as a hypervisor

i dont have very much experience with esxi but i am willing to learn, or maybe even KVM/proxmox

due to the "hardware" raid controllers is ZFS even an option for me, neither of the controllers to my knowledge offer a JBOD mode or pass the smart info to the OS

i do intend on running a webserver and mail server from the microserver location

thanks for any advice or opinions that can be offered

Anthony
 

Quickbeam

New Member
Dec 18, 2015
3
0
1
35
Hi Mark,

umm yes DFS could be an option, but to my understanding though both servers need to be on the same domain, they are currently only configured in workgroups

so to put them on the same domain i would need to do what? setup a VPN between them?
 

uOpt

Member
Dec 12, 2014
43
7
8
Boston, MA, USA
A slow link between two large filesystems that you want to keep in sync is a prime use for sendfile/receivefile snapshots. ZFS does, I think BTRFS does, too. That would allow for very high frequencies of syncs without overloading either the link or the filesystem.

If you used rsync instead you would at least always traverse the entire filesystem hierarchy. That would work quite well if there are few files (no matter how big they are) but would quickly become annoying as the number of total directory entries goes up.