Omaha2002, you run mirror + stripes + SSD, I run parity (RAID5) with no SSD cache and this will have some impact, I guess.
Walshlink, the RAID reconfiguration you describe is native to BTRFS-RAID. But Netgear don't use that at all, they use BTRFS on top of MDRAID/LVM volumes. Also, ZFS' block-level deduplication is probably sufficient for most users, even if the case you describe isn't the best case for ZFS. 🙂
Does someone know if the 128MB USB standard bootdisk for the ReadyNAS (behind the frontpanel) is replacable with another USB disk? This way it would be possible for anyone without VGA breakout cable to install FreeNAS.
The way for users without VGA to install it would be using chainloading.
Well, right now I have one ReadyNAS Pro on FreeNAS and the other one on OS6. For VM's FreeNAS with the SSD as L2ARC is really fast, on OS6 with 6 VM's everything would come to a grinding halt with some load. Right now on the FreeNAS I'm running 8 VM's with no lag at all.
No quite sure if I convert the other one to FreeNAS too, it's got 6 x 4TB and will be using it for a lot of data storage only. It might be a good idea to keep an eye on OS6 too and this way I can test them both..
But on the other hand I might throw FreeNAS at it in the end too, I really like the interface and possibilities and NFS does feel a bit more mature.
Copied 1.5TB in the past couple of hours and everything seems stable, no watchdog timeout messages, right now I only have two tunables added in the webgui under System -> Tunables:
to 0 instead of 1 because although you have 4GB of RAM, it is not really 4GB of RAM available as on-board video and AHCI BIOS take up some of that memory?.
I set it 0, so I enabled ZFS prefetch although I have a bit less then 4GB memory installed. For the environment in which I use the FreeNAS I thought enabling it would not be a problem. In the graphs overview I can see that FreeNAS uses up all memory up to the almost 4gb, performance is good. I haven't test performance with disabled prefetch, if it makes any difference. Can do that this weekend.
I've read the article's, it's about FreeBSD 8.0 instead of 9.2 but I can imagine that the parameter is acting the same.. let me know if you find out if setting the parameter to enabled or disabled makes any difference.
Did the parameter set eventually through the FreeNAS webinterface?
Yeah, I got it set. I think I'll keep "ZFS prefetch disable" set to 0 as the system doesn't truly have 4GB of RAM to use. I'll change it later if I get 8GB of RAM installed. Performance is ok...I'm using encrypted RAIDZ2 on 4x2TB drives and can get around 37.5 MB/sec writes and 59.6 MB/sec reads to/from a SMB share.
I think setting ZFS prefetch disable to 0 is actually enabling it, you can see in reports how much wired ram is being used, probably almost up to 4GB. 37.5MB/sec write and 59.6MB/sec read is not really fast, have you tried 2 x 2TB mirrored/striped? FreeNAS probabely finds that the optimal configuration for your disks. I get 100/100 MB/sec read and write copying from my PC to the NAS and around 70/80MB/sec copying from my ReadyNAS to the FReeNAS.
Yesterday I installed the 8 GB Patriot memory, within an hour it was all used as wired memory, running 8 VM's..
ARC Total accesses: 803.11k Cache Hit Ratio: 80.54% 646.82k Cache Miss Ratio: 19.46% 156.29k Actual Hit Ratio: 77.14% 619.50k
Data Demand Efficiency: 92.42% 400.25k Data Prefetch Efficiency: 10.12% 116.75k
CACHE HITS BY CACHE LIST: Anonymously Used: 3.12% 20.20k Most Recently Used: 48.73% 315.23k Most Frequently Used: 47.04% 304.27k Most Recently Used Ghost: 0.46% 2.95k Most Frequently Used Ghost: 0.65% 4.17k
I think setting ZFS prefetch disable to 0 is actually enabling it, you can see in reports how much wired ram is being used, probably almost up to 4GB. 37.5MB/sec write and 59.6MB/sec read is not really fast, have you tried 2 x 2TB mirrored/striped? FreeNAS probabely finds that the optimal configuration for your disks. I get 100/100 MB/sec read and write copying from my PC to the NAS and around 70/80MB/sec copying from my ReadyNAS to the FReeNAS.
Yesterday I installed the 8 GB Patriot memory, within an hour it was all used as wired memory, running 8 VM's..
Hmm tested this evening again and still 100mB/sec write and 104mB/sec read from Local Windows 8 PC to Freenas cifs share.
Read the articles but must say the guy responding to all questions is pretty blunt and not very openminded... I found more informative articles with better tips...
I've been running it now for 3 weeks too, 9.2.1 FREENAS right now and I'm very happy with it. Performancewise regarding iops I think it performs better than OS6. Running arc_summary show 78% hitrate on L2Arc using 65 gb on the SSD. It's stable and the community reacts very quick to bugs, solving them within days.
On the other readynas I run OS6 and it's also very stable, will update to 6.1.6 next week because I see a lot of improvements made it to that version.
If I HAD to choose I would go with FREENAS, right now I'm happy running both.. 😉
Someone should point out how to chainload FREENAS so more people could try it without needing the vga breakout cable.
bios_version=4.6.5 board_asset_tag=To be filled by O.E.M. board_name=ReadyNAS 516 board_serial=To be filled by O.E.M. board_vendor=NETGEAR board_version=To be filled by O.E.M. chassis_asset_tag=To Be Filled By O.E.M. chassis_serial=To Be Filled By O.E.M. chassis_type=3 chassis_vendor=NETGEAR chassis_version=To Be Filled By O.E.M. modalias=dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr4.6.5:bd06/06/2013:svnNETGEAR:pnReadyNAS516:pvr06/06/2013ReadyNAS-516V1.0:rvnNETGEAR:rnReadyNAS516:rvrTobefilledbyO.E.M.:cvnNETGEAR:ct3:cvrToBeFilledByO.E.M.: product_name=ReadyNAS 516 product_serial=123-8675309 product_sku=RN516 product_uuid=00F1892C-D21D-B211-8000-4494FC6E0B00 product_version=06/06/2013 ReadyNAS-516 V1.0
