FreeNAS versus unRAID as the operating-system for a DIY NAS?

claypigeon Wrote:If what you are concerned about is multiple volumes for your XBMC system, if you are in library mode and you have your sources set up it aggregates the volumes into a single view for you. So from a usability perspective it looks like one big volume of movies.

xbmc does the job aggregating different sources into a library just fine - but you also have the option of doing the same on your NAS using unionfs, with the added bonus that other machines on your network just see one source.

I use ZFS on freenas now, but for many years quite happily had my own 'fake raid' setup (there's no raid and no redundancy though!)

I had multiple, independent disks that I used to ftp movies to, filling one up and then moving on to the next one.
I combined all the disks using unionfs and (because they were all movies for my network) set up a read only samba share:

mount -t unionfs -o ro -o noatime /mnt/SATA-I/Movies/ /mnt/Movies/
mount -t unionfs -o ro -o noatime /mnt/SATA-II/Movies/ /mnt/Movies/
mount -t unionfs -o ro -o noatime /mnt/SATA-III/Movies/ /mnt/Movies/
etc.

Worked great for my usage - Full bandwidth to the disk while reading/writing, and shows as a single volume share to the network. Redundancy wasn't hugely important to me obviously, losing a single disk loses you a single disk's worth of content (non-media 'important' files were simply rsync'd between disks.

hazeh Wrote:xbmc does the job aggregating different sources into a library just fine - but you also have the option of doing the same on your NAS using unionfs, with the added bonus that other machines on your network just see one source.

I use ZFS on freenas now, but for many years quite happily had my own 'fake raid' setup (there's no raid and no redundancy though!)

I had multiple, independent disks that I used to ftp movies to, filling one up and then moving on to the next one.
I combined all the disks using unionfs and (because they were all movies for my network) set up a read only samba share:

mount -t unionfs -o ro -o noatime /mnt/SATA-I/Movies/ /mnt/Movies/
mount -t unionfs -o ro -o noatime /mnt/SATA-II/Movies/ /mnt/Movies/
mount -t unionfs -o ro -o noatime /mnt/SATA-III/Movies/ /mnt/Movies/
etc.

Worked great for my usage - Full bandwidth to the disk while reading/writing, and shows as a single volume share to the network. Redundancy wasn't hugely important to me obviously, losing a single disk loses you a single disk's worth of content (non-media 'important' files were simply rsync'd between disks.

I concur, assuming seeing your content represented as a single volume external to xbmc of importance. I will also point out that the use of ZFS is independent of any RAID platform and can be installed as part of a *nix disto, so *inx include it such as BSD but other require it to be installed due to licencing requirements, so ZFS does not require a raid package, just an OS that can support the ZFS code base. Additionally PV spanning, up to 8EB, can be accomplished other ways such as LVM on 64 bit linux kernels.

Point being if one is just concerned about content aggregation within xbmc and data protection is not paramount, one just needs to point their sources.xml to the network shares or file systems that contain the content. No raid based NAS system is required, nor is any PV volume spanning technology such as ZFS or LVM.

I plan on building my first NAS primarily for the use of streaming media over my home network.

Reading this thread has been extremely useful to me on weighing up the pros and cons of ZFS ( freenas ) vs Unraid.

I am no expert when it comes to networking and such but I feel as though the main drawcards to me and maybe to other casual / newcomers to NAS will look for when deciding between ZFS and Unraid is:

Unraid - Only spins up the drives you are using. Saves power and I guess extends the life of the HDD's.
In an extremely bad scenario where you lose the parity drive and a data drive, you are still able to access data off the other data drives.

ZFS - Bitrot corruption prevention. I find this to be the biggest drawcard. The fact that it can auto repair HDD's is the main reason I'd choose this storage system. I find ZFS ( freenas ) to be a more polished and refined NAS OS aswell.

Saying this though, I still am undecided as to which OS to choose as my NAS so I guess I shall keep reading!!

ShinobiNinjai Wrote:I plan on building my first NAS primarily for the use of streaming media over my home network.

Reading this thread has been extremely useful to me on weighing up the pros and cons of ZFS ( freenas ) vs Unraid.

I am no expert when it comes to networking and such but I feel as though the main drawcards to me and maybe to other casual / newcomers to NAS will look for when deciding between ZFS and Unraid is:

Unraid - Only spins up the drives you are using. Saves power and I guess extends the life of the HDD's.
In an extremely bad scenario where you lose the parity drive and a data drive, you are still able to access data off the other data drives.

ZFS - Bitrot corruption prevention. I find this to be the biggest drawcard. The fact that it can auto repair HDD's is the main reason I'd choose this storage system. I find ZFS ( freenas ) to be a more polished and refined NAS OS aswell.

Saying this though, I still am undecided as to which OS to choose as my NAS so I guess I shall keep reading!!

Freenas also has the ability to spin down drives when not in use as well but it will be an entire array at a time and will spin up the entire array when accessed.

most people opt for unraid because of the ability to expand to more drives. you aren't exactly able to do this in freenas as you have to add more vdevs to a pool and it's not really the same thing.

I use freenas and I like it very much. i have it setup with 6x2TB drives in a raid Z2 array so I have plenty of space and security.

feel free to ask any questions.

PS freenas (ZFS mainly) does require better hardware to perform. I currently have 16GB of memory in mine.

Have you managed to install sabzbd and sickbeard onto your Freenas NAS?
This is the main criteria I am looking for. I have had no luck so far with freenas 0.73. I have read somewhere they are making it easier with a plugin package or something in upcoming 8.1

ShinobiNinjai Wrote:Have you managed to install sabzbd and sickbeard onto your Freenas NAS?
This is the main criteria I am looking for. I have had no luck so far with freenas 0.73. I have read somewhere they are making it easier with a plugin package or something in upcoming 8.1

Yes I do have it running, it is still a bit of a hack at the moment but it's still simple enough.

Yes plugin support will be available in 8.2, which should be available in the upcoming months.

Here is the guide I used to install Sab, couch potato, and sick beard. The new multimedia builds of freeness include Firefly (iTunes server), transmission and various other utilities.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freena...15&t=11618

Although it's not free, the next version of Windows (downloadable consumer preview) has excellent pooled storage capability. With this you can implement a Drobo-like share.

According to user Gollumscave, whose posts I have followed in some threads and in PM, he ended up with "Ubuntu with ZFS-Fuse" after having gone through a few tests with FreeNAS (because of ZFS) and is now happily running this setup:

Quote:I have a system at the moment with 25 drives. They are all cheap 2Tbyte drives from WD. I have them running under Ubuntu Server and have installed ZFS-Fuse. They are setup as 2 sets of 10 drives running Raidz2, and 1 array of 5 drives running raidz.

More of his forum posts in this thread.

I too look forward to setting up my NAS and it does seem to be a close race when weighing the pros and cons for both unRAID and free NAS. At this time I find my biggest obstacle the current price on HDD's

(2012-02-26 06:05)lrusak Wrote:  

ShinobiNinjai Wrote:I plan on building my first NAS primarily for the use of streaming media over my home network.

Reading this thread has been extremely useful to me on weighing up the pros and cons of ZFS ( freenas ) vs Unraid.

I am no expert when it comes to networking and such but I feel as though the main drawcards to me and maybe to other casual / newcomers to NAS will look for when deciding between ZFS and Unraid is:

Unraid - Only spins up the drives you are using. Saves power and I guess extends the life of the HDD's.
In an extremely bad scenario where you lose the parity drive and a data drive, you are still able to access data off the other data drives.

ZFS - Bitrot corruption prevention. I find this to be the biggest drawcard. The fact that it can auto repair HDD's is the main reason I'd choose this storage system. I find ZFS ( freenas ) to be a more polished and refined NAS OS aswell.

Saying this though, I still am undecided as to which OS to choose as my NAS so I guess I shall keep reading!!

Freenas also has the ability to spin down drives when not in use as well but it will be an entire array at a time and will spin up the entire array when accessed.

most people opt for unraid because of the ability to expand to more drives. you aren't exactly able to do this in freenas as you have to add more vdevs to a pool and it's not really the same thing.

I use freenas and I like it very much. i have it setup with 6x2TB drives in a raid Z2 array so I have plenty of space and security.

feel free to ask any questions.

PS freenas (ZFS mainly) does require better hardware to perform. I currently have 16GB of memory in mine.

Hope you can help me with this scenario -
1. I would like to start my media server initially with a 2TB drive and Freenas with ZFS but will not implement any Raid solution (obviously).
2. As I keep filling up my HD, I will buy which ever drive I can get at a cheap price.
3. As I add multiple HDs, I would like to use the unionfs command to present all drives as a single volume.
4. If at some point I feel that my collection of movies and songs is important, how difficult will it be to convert that bunch of HDs to a raid1 solution or even a unRaid solution? Am I violating the basic concepts of raid?
5. BTW, did anyone try Windows8 as a media server? Doesn't it have similar capabilities as that of an unRaid?

Any suggestions, solutions and even education short of retorts, are appreciated and welcomed.