FreeNAS & ZFS Stability

For the last couple of months, I have been using FreeNAS as my home NAS.  I wanted to use ZFS for the upgrade potential, which was completely uncharted territory for me.  The then stable release had a build of ZFS v6.  Comparing that to ZFS v18 that’s available in OpenSolaris meant there were stability and features that were not present.  Installing the 32-bit version and setting up the ZFS raid was straight forward, but after a couple hours using it, I started noticing kernel panics causing the NAS to reboot, along with CIPS/Samba service lockups during file transfers.  I had to hard boot the NAS a couple of times due to these lock-ups, which unfortunately, eventually caused the array to corrupt.

I installed the same 32bit official release a couple of times, each time recreating the same problem, lock ups / kernel panics during file transfers.  What was causing the instability was likely the ZFS v6 packaged in FreeNAS.  I came to that conclusion after looking for a newer unofficial version of FreeNAS w/ZFS.  I stumbled across a build done by the same person that built the iSCSI code for FreeNAS.  The trail led to the Japanese developer’s site that had builds of FreeNAS w/ZFS v13 in both x86 and x64 flavors.  He goes by daoyama on the FreeNAS forums.

FreeNAS 0.72 w/ ZFS v13 – x86

FreeNAS 0.72 w/ ZFS v13 – x64

FYI – These links are to 7S build 5024.  The version I’m running is 7S build 4967.

I installed the x64 version of this developers build, re-setup the ZFS raid and started testing transfers again.  Rock.  Solid.  It’s be up for 24 days, and I’ve transferred over 300GB to it, including transfer sessions in excess of 40GB.  Maybe my hardware prefers the x64 flavor, but either way it’s working and I’m no longer worrying about stability.

If you’re interested in upgrading from your current ZFS v6 to a ZFS v13 build of FreeNAS, dnar2 has a walk through here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=5598&hilit=zfs13&start=30

Offsite Backup

The next thing I will be looking for is cheap offsite backup solution that can be integrated into FreeNAS.  Any provider I’ve looked at is based on size, or is Windows based.  I may try mounting the NAS via iSCSI and transferring it that way using one of the Windows programs, but even these “unlimited” backup services have storage limits.  When it’s full, my NAS will have over 1.5TB, so if anyone knows of an offsite storage provider that won’t break the bank and allows that type of volume, drop me a line.