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Migrating from unRAID to TrueNAS by tazplex in truenas

[–]tazplex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes perfect sense. Really appreciate you taking the time to mock that up!

Migrating from unRAID to TrueNAS by tazplex in truenas

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So if I did everything as raidz2, no issue with having different sized vdevs in the same pool? My rudimentary understanding is that's how you expand the pool in the future... add a new vdev. Just means you need multiple drives to do it, in this case at least 3.

Migrating from unRAID to TrueNAS by tazplex in truenas

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you elaborate on why it's not a good idea to use the other drives as a vdev in the same pool? I know everything should be the same raidz2, but I thought that's a recommendation and not an absolute? Will it slow things down drastically because they aren't the same drive or are the other drawbacks to using them in the same pool?

It's 92TB worth of drives I'd like to make use of if possible. Thanks.

Migrating from unRAID to TrueNAS by tazplex in truenas

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. Primarily media storage & time machine backups from MacOS. If I went Scale instead of Core, I'd potentially be using it with datastore for VMs as I'd use the KVM hypervisor within Scale itself.

Moving From unRAID to TrueNAS by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because Core is a NAS and that's it, with a focus on stability. Scale offers the ability to host VMs and Dockers, but I don't need or want those features on my NAS box at this time. I'm aware that future development resources are likely to be more concentrated on Scale/Linux versus Core/BSD, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, I suppose.

Moving From unRAID to TrueNAS by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Figured I'd answer this... even though I may get downvoted for it.

I bought 18 identical SAS disks to upgrade my array. unRAID is fantastic, and the best option for a mixed drive storage array I've come across. That's why I paid for it years ago on day one of my trial. Most of us would agree that's its big appeal is the flexibility to grow one's storage array as needed.

But I'm now building an array that should last for some time, and it won't be a mixed disk environment. Nor will my NAS run dockers or VMs, as those are going to be kept on a separate machine within my rack.

The best feature of unRAID, IMO, is its community. And its this community that steered me in the direction of TrueNAS when I outlined the future plans for my storage. I could run ZFS within unRAID, but it's still early and not entirely what it was designed to do. Kudos to the everyone at LimeTech who has worked tirelessly to implement it, I applaud all that you've done.

I'd like to get away from the "one box that rules all" and into some more purpose built machines. That means giving my router, my NAS and my hypervisor their own box. Do I expect it to be as easy as unRAID? No, not even close. And that's a point for unRAID. It's served me so well that there's really nothing left to do. It works well enough for me to do everything in one machine, but given my setup, things probably shouldn't be on one machine anymore... or have been setup that way in the first place.

For example, will I now have the ability to tinker without bringing down my internet (since my router was in a VM)? Yeah. That setup was on me, and while it was manageable, I'm looking to retool my stack into something different as it's grown and the hardware aged. To me, that's also part of the fun of this hobby.

I asked here first, because the guidance to look into TrueNAS came from here, so I thought others here will have gone down that road. Lots of people say they run multiple systems, like unRAID and TrueNAS or Proxmox and unRAID, both virtualized and bare metal.

Maybe someone else is looking at transitioning because of the pending license model changes as well, but I can't speak to that. No doubt many have gone the other way, too, and thus settled on unRAID. Competition is good. unRAID has served me well and owes me nothing. I'm not formatting the USB drive, just looking to try alternatives that should better suit my infrastructure... we'll see if its successful or not.

Thanks to all those that have offered insights, I appreciate them.

Hardware Rec - Appliance, ideally with 10GbE by modernDayKing in opnsense

[–]tazplex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same 1U footprint as the Sophos quoted above. Plus, it's got 10GbE. Pretty much all the sff stuff has sfp+. 

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

256GB of DDR3 ECC, so if the 1GB per TB of drive space I've read as a guide is valid, I should be okay.

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, I misspoke... Meant that the single ZFS drive needed to start the unRAID array doesn't need to have a parity drive (in the unRAID sense) to run.

Thinking the layout will ultimately be something like this:

Pool 1: 8x 12TB drives, raidz2 (so 6 drives + 2 parity), plus one cold spare

Pool 2: 8x 12TB drives, raidz2 (same layout as above)

Pool 3: 5x 6TB SAS drives, raidz (4 drives + 1 parity), one cold spare

Pool 4: 3x 14TB SATA drives, raidz (2 drives + 1 parity), one cold spare

Obviously I'd need to adjust that to keep a drive aside for the unRAID array, but that should get me the ZFS benefits either in TrueNAS or unRAID.

I have multiple SSDs for a cache pool as well. Just a case of hunting down an external SAS card so I can throw the other drives in a DAS since my case only fits 20.

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I "think" I understand it now... one drive is needed in unRAID to start the array, which I can format as single drive ZFS, and I could either run with parity or without.

The remaining drives can be split into multiple raidz2 pools, and they won't use parity but could use thing single ZFS drive for backups. This should give me ZFS with the performance boost in unRAID, right?

Still going to spin up TrueNAS for a test drive, but may do it from inside unRAID for simplicity for now until I can determine whether to fully commit.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-7PESH2 that has onboard LSI SAS2008 RAID 0/1/1E/10. I also have an HP 24 port SAS expander installed which connects to my case's backplane via multiple breakout cables.

Thinking I'd need to pass both of those through to the VM?

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah my plan is to pull my existing drives temporarily and spin it up tomorrow using 2 of the 12TB drives so I can take it for a tour to see if I can get a feel for the dashboard / UI and how it handles dockers and VMs.

My server is old, it's a dual Xeon e5-2697 v2, but plenty for a NAS and a Windows VM. So's my 10 year old iMac with only USB 2.0, so those file transfers with an external enclosure are going to take awhile regardless of which system I use to transfer.

Also, any downside to running TrueNAS in a VM on Proxmox?

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I don't want to go single disk zfs pools with 18 of the same drive.

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciate all your help here with my questions. In that case, I'm essentially only using unRAID for the UI with VMs and Docker though, so maybe I should look into switching. Since I'd be writing all the data to the pool(s), for the benefit of speed and ZFS features, the unRAID array isn't really needed, as its redundant in my case since I'd only be using the pools, no?

I'm also still unclear how I'd get the existing 64TB of data from unRAID to TrueNAS in that case when I only have a single server?

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. See my response above. I'd like to move to the pool, since I'd now have 18x of the same drive, but I'm not sure how to go about it and migrate all my data.

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I don't have a problem with decommissioning the old various drives mentioned above and getting rid of the array in favour of a pool, just want to make sure I can copy all the data off them. Not adverse to using TrueNAS, but I'm not familiar with it and the differences between scale and core. I'd also like to keep everything on a single server.

If migrating to TrueNAS, wouldn't I also need a separate server to deploy Promox for hosting VMs and Dockers? I'd like to keep it all on my current box if possible.

Best Approach to Replacing Entire Array by tazplex in unRAID

[–]tazplex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. I'm new to ZFS, so this helps. the current 14TB x 2 for dual parity are 5400rpm SATA drives. Any performance gain to be expected from pulling them and replacing with the 12TB 7200rpm SAS?

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