The first thing i had to decide on was hardware versus software raid. But i have problem deciding that should i use hardware raid raid6 or zfs based raidz2. Freenas storage operating system open source freenas. If you are considering raid 5 youll want to lean more heavily towards zfs software raid vs. The different ways that mirroring, striping and parity are used defines the different raid levels. There is also a supplementary freenas hardware guide blog available that. One of the first questions we felt needed to be answered was what exactly hardware raid cards do. Instead, it has the software raid but the software raid requires 5 hdds. Selfbuilt nas wfreenas and a hardware raid controller. Now i have to configure that server for the freenas, but i have found that the freenas wont support the hardware raid. Deciding between hardware and software raid in my freenas. Zfs is the best parity raid implementation on the planet and when we state the horror numbers for raid 5 we do it assuming zfs so that no one can dispute the numbers and if you run anything besides zfs for parity raid the risks actually increase. A redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability.
You dont need a controller for that and you can use your motherboard sata ports to build the volumes. Unraid vs freenas vs openmediavault, which is the best nas software in 2019 see drives down below in description. If you want to talk about zfs raid, theres plenty of comments on how they compare in the forum if you want to do some hunting. Zfs does not support growing the array by 12 drives at a time. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s. Freenas makes two partitions on the drive, one for swap i think 2g or 4g is the default and a second for zfs. Potentially able to upgrade the hardware to another freenas box.
In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a raid controller card inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. Hardware raid strongly discouraged ixsystems community. One of them will be used for the os and cant be used for other raid configuration. Reasons for using software raid versus a hardware raid setup. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. In that spirit, weve put together a worst practices guide for freenas based on. We have seen the same hba perform around 5% slower with raid firmware vs. You will lose most of the benefits of zfs if you use a hardware raid. Then in raidz1 it will take your four disks and stripe across them exactly the same as raid5. Well, raid5, raid10, and raid6 are all hardware raid designs, so performance will depend on the hardware controller used. No remote ipmi management, still nonecc memory, will eventually have to upgrade since mobo wont support raid card, etc option 2 sell used hardware including the raid card, build nas box with good server equipment.
Tips on striping, mirroring, and striping with parity by scott lowe mcse in data centers on may 24, 2005, 12. If you just want jbod, buy a hba instead of raid card. Solved configuring zfs on freenas for backup storage from a. Zfs software raid uses some cpu and a small amount of ram. Nas set up, hardware raid vs freenas or nas4free h. Whether software raid vs hardware raid is the one for you depends on what you need to do and how much you want to pay. This is something of a misconception as all raid is software raid. If youre using freenas arent you stuck with zfs anyway.
Raid 10 vs raid5 performance on freenas ixsystems community. Processing is required to carry out those actions, and that can take place on the host servers os or in the storage array or controller. Which will be good choise hardware raid or zfs based. It eliminates most, if not all of the shortcomings found in legacy file systems and hardware raid devices. Therefore, hardware raid is not needed and should not be used with freenas. Heres a link to the appropriate section in the freenas manual for 8.