Tag Archives: FreeNAS

FreeNAS – Using one SSD for ZIL and L2ARC

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Following on from my previous musings on FreeNAS, I thought I’d do a quick howto post on using one SSD for both ZIL and L2ARC. This has been covered here and here, but I found myself missing a few steps, so I thought I’d cover it here for my own benefit if nothing else. Before I start though, you should really consider using two drives, particularly with ZIL. And before you start, you’ve obviously already gone through the exercise of understanding your workload, and you’ve thought about the ramifications of what you’re doing, right? Because using one drive isn’t necessarily recommended …

So, let’s get started by connecting to your NAS via SSH are some other console mechanism.

Last login: Sun Dec 13 10:25:29 on console
dans-MacBook-Pro:~ dan$ ssh [email protected]

[email protected]'s password: 
Last login: Wed Dec 30 06:57:25 2015 from 192.168.0.100
FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE-p28 (FREENAS.amd64) #0 r288272+f229c79: Sat Dec 12 11:58:01 PST 2015

FreeNAS (c) 2009-2015, The FreeNAS Development Team
All rights reserved.
FreeNAS is released under the modified BSD license.

For more information, documentation, help or support, go here:
  http://freenas.org

Welcome to FreeNAS

You then need to find your SSD.

[email protected]:~ % sudo camcontrol devlist
Password:
<INTEL SSDSC2CT060A3 300i>         at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (ada0,pass0)
<ST32000644NS 130C>                at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (ada1,pass1)
<ST32000644NS 130C>                at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (ada2,pass2)
<ST32000644NS 130C>                at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (ada3,pass3)
<ST32000644NS 130C>                at scbus4 target 0 lun 0 (ada4,pass4)
<ST32000644NS 130C>                at scbus5 target 0 lun 0 (ada5,pass5)
<SanDisk Cruzer Force 1.26>        at scbus7 target 0 lun 0 (pass6,da0)

I then wanted to look at ada0, this being the SSD.

[email protected]:~ % sudo gpart show ada0
gpart: No such geom: ada0.

No dice. But it’s there, isn’t it?

[email protected]:~ % zpool list -v
NAME                                     SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
freenas-boot                            14.9G   533M  14.4G         -      -     3%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
  gptid/57344c8a-ae4d-11e5-b98c-bc5ff42c6cb2  14.9G   533M  14.4G         -      -     3%
volume0                                 9.06T  2.99M  9.06T         -     0%     0%  1.00x  ONLINE  /mnt
  raidz1                                9.06T  2.99M  9.06T         -     0%     0%
    gptid/6b604f11-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6c25f30c-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6cf26f5b-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6dc0508f-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6e88fc7a-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
[email protected]:~ % geom disk list
Geom name: da0
Providers:
1. Name: da0
   Mediasize: 16008609792 (14G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e3
   descr: SanDisk Cruzer Force
   lunname: SanDisk Cruzer Force    4C532000050815116541
   lunid: SanDisk Cruzer Force    4C532000050815116541
   ident: 4C532000050815116541
   fwsectors: 63
   fwheads: 255
Geom name: ada0
Providers:
1. Name: ada0
   Mediasize: 60022480896 (55G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 4096
   Stripeoffset: 0
   Mode: r0w0e0
   descr: INTEL SSDSC2CT060A3
   lunid: 5001517bb28ade6a
   ident: CVMP213600AQ060AGN
   fwsectors: 63
   fwheads: 16
Geom name: ada1
Providers:
1. Name: ada1
   Mediasize: 2000398934016 (1.8T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r2w2e5
   descr: ST32000644NS
   lunid: 5000c5004027e7b5
   ident: 9WM88536
   fwsectors: 63
   fwheads: 16
Geom name: ada2
Providers:
1. Name: ada2
   Mediasize: 2000398934016 (1.8T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r2w2e5
   descr: ST32000644NS
   lunid: 5000c50040276a46
   ident: 9WM88DV9
   fwsectors: 63
   fwheads: 16

[snip]

Ok, so I can see it, but I can’t. I mucked about a bit, and came up with this approach.

[email protected]:~ % sudo gpart create -s gpt ada0
ada0 created
[email protected]:~ % sudo gpart add -a 4k -b 128 -t freebsd-zfs -s 10G ada0
ada0p1 added
[email protected]:~ % sudo gpart add -a 4k -t freebsd-zfs ada0
ada0p2 added

Which worked well. Now I need to get the UUIDs.

[email protected]:~ % sudo gpart list
Geom name: da0
modified: false
state: OK
fwheads: 255
fwsectors: 63
last: 31266782
first: 34
entries: 128
scheme: GPT
Providers:
1. Name: da0p1
   Mediasize: 524288 (512k)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 0
   Stripeoffset: 17408
   Mode: r0w0e0
   rawuuid: 572c8954-ae4d-11e5-b98c-bc5ff42c6cb2
   rawtype: 21686148-6449-6e6f-744e-656564454649
   label: 1
   length: 524288
   offset: 17408
   type: bios-boot
   index: 1
   end: 1057
   start: 34
2. Name: da0p2
   Mediasize: 16008044544 (14G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 0
   Stripeoffset: 544768
   Mode: r1w1e2
   rawuuid: 57344c8a-ae4d-11e5-b98c-bc5ff42c6cb2
   rawtype: 516e7cba-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
   label: 1
   length: 16008044544
   offset: 544768
   type: freebsd-zfs
   index: 2
   end: 31266775
   start: 1064
Consumers:
1. Name: da0
   Mediasize: 16008609792 (14G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e3

[snip]

Geom name: ada0
modified: false
state: OK
fwheads: 16
fwsectors: 63
last: 117231374
first: 34
entries: 128
scheme: GPT
Providers:
1. Name: ada0p1
   Mediasize: 10737418240 (10G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 4096
   Stripeoffset: 0
   Mode: r0w0e0
   rawuuid: 94a4bd28-aeb7-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2
   rawtype: 516e7cba-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
   label: 1
   length: 10737418240
   offset: 65536
   type: freebsd-zfs
   index: 1
   end: 20971647
   start: 128
2. Name: ada0p2
   Mediasize: 49284976640 (45G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 4096
   Stripeoffset: 0
   Mode: r0w0e0
   rawuuid: 9a79622f-aeb7-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2
   rawtype: 516e7cba-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
   label: 1
   length: 49284976640
   offset: 10737483776
   type: freebsd-zfs
   index: 2
   end: 117231367
   start: 20971648
Consumers:
1. Name: ada0
   Mediasize: 60022480896 (55G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 4096
   Stripeoffset: 0
   Mode: r0w0e0

Let’s double-check.

[email protected]:~ % sudo gpart show ada0
=>       34  117231341  ada0  GPT  (55G)
         34         94        - free -  (47k)
        128   20971520     1  freebsd-zfs  (10G)
   20971648   96259720     2  freebsd-zfs  (45G)
  117231368          7        - free -  (3.5k)

Everything looks copacetic. Let’s add them to the zpool. ZIL is log and L2ARC is cache. My pool is volume0 and I’m using the rawuuid value.

[email protected]:~ % sudo zpool add volume0 log gptid/94a4bd28-aeb7-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2
[email protected]:~ % sudo zpool add volume0 cache gptid/9a79622f-aeb7-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2

And here it is, all done.

[email protected]:~ % zpool list -v
NAME                                     SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
freenas-boot                            14.9G   533M  14.4G         -      -     3%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
  gptid/57344c8a-ae4d-11e5-b98c-bc5ff42c6cb2  14.9G   533M  14.4G         -      -     3%
volume0                                 9.06T  3.02M  9.06T         -     0%     0%  1.00x  ONLINE  /mnt
  raidz1                                9.06T  3.02M  9.06T         -     0%     0%
    gptid/6b604f11-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6c25f30c-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6cf26f5b-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6dc0508f-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
    gptid/6e88fc7a-aeb5-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2      -      -      -         -      -      -
  gptid/94a4bd28-aeb7-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2  9.94G   132K  9.94G         -     0%     0%
cache                                       -      -      -      -      -      -
  gptid/9a79622f-aeb7-11e5-99ac-bc5ff42c6cb2  45.9G   190K  45.9G         -     0%     0%
[email protected]:~ %

 

FreeNAS – A few notes

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Mat and I have been talking about FreeNAS a lot recently. My QNAP TS-639 Pro is approaching 7 years old and I’m reluctant to invest further money in drives for it. So we’ve been doing a bit of research on what might be good hardware and so forth. I thought I’d put together a few links that I found useful and share some commentary.

Firstly, FreeNAS has been around for a while now, and there is a plethora of useful documentation available via the official documentation, forums and blog posts. While digging through the comments on a post I noticed someone saying that the FreeNAS crowd like to patronise people a lot. It might be a little unfair, although they do sometimes come across as a bit dickish, so be prepared. It’s like anything on the internet really.

Secondly, most of the angst comes about through the choices people make for their DIY hardware builds. There’s a lot of talk about ECC RAM and why it’s critical to a decent build. I have a strong dislike of the word “noobs” and variants, but there are some good points made in this thread. Brian Moses has an interesting counter here, which I found insightful as well. So, your mileage might vary. For what it’s worth, I’m not using ECC RAM in my current build, but I am by no means a shining light when it comes to best practice for IT in the home. If I was going to store data on it that I couldn’t afford to reload from another source (I’m using it to stream mkv files around the house) I would look at ECC.

Thirdly, one of the “folk of the forum”, as I’ll now call them, has a handy primer on FreeNAS that you can view in a few different ways here. It hasn’t been updated in a little while, but it covers off a lot of the salient points when looking at doing your own build and getting started with FreeNAS. If you want a few alternative approaches to what may or may not work for you, have a look at Brian’s post here, as well as this one and this one. Also, if you’re still on the fence about FreeNAS, take a look at Brian’s DIY NAS Software Roundup – it’s well written and covers a number of the important points. The key takeaways when looking at doing your own build are as follows:

  • Do your research before you buy stuff;
  • Don’t go cheap on RAM (ECC if you can);
  • Think about the real requirement for ZIL or L2ARC; and
  • Not everyone on the internet is a prick, but sometimes it will seem like that.

Finally, my experience with FreeNAS itself has been pretty good. I admit that I haven’t used FreeBSD or its variants in quite a few years, but the web interface is pretty easy to navigate. I’ve mucked about a bit with the different zpool configurations, and how to configure the ZIL and L2ARC on a different drive (that post is coming shortly). The installation is straight forward and once I got my head around the concept of jails it was easy to setup Plex and give it a spin too. Performance was good given the hardware I’ve tested on (when the drives weren’t overheating due to the lack of airflow and an Aussie summer). I’m hoping to do the real build this week or next, so I’ll see how it goes then and report back. I might give NexentaStor Community Edition a crack as well. I have a soft spot for them because they gave me some shoes once. In the meantime, if anyone at iXsystems wants to send me a FreeNAS Mini, just let me know.