Setting up a software RAID 5 in FreeBSD

jigglywiggly

jigglywiggly

Ok, so I have 300gig hd I just want for the OS. Then I have 3x1.5tb hds. I want them to be in RAID 5. (Every hd in the system is SATA)
How should I go about doing this? I wanted to use mdadm, except that's a Linux thing.

1. How would I go about setting it up with the different software RAID options?
2. How can I run smarttests? And if I install gnome on this FreeBSD box, is there any gui utility to use?
3. How will it alert me when a hard drive is failing?
 
I'd recommend using ZFS with RAID-Z (the equivalent of RAID 5). It's easy to use and ZFS has a lot of powerful features, although some tuning may be required.

Label the disks with glabel():
Code: 
# glabel label disk1 /dev/ad0
# glabel label disk2 /dev/ad1
# glabel label disk3 /dev/ad2

Then create a pool:
Code: 
# zpool create tank raidz1 label/disk1 label/disk2 label/disk3
 
dennylin93 said:
I'd recommend using ZFS with RAID-Z (the equivalent of RAID 5).
Click to expand...
Only if you have a decent machine with plenty of memory (>2GB).
 
Ok I did, sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
I will continue to see what happens.

EDIT: I did that, then I did: zpool create tank raidz1 label/disk1 label/disk2 label/disk3
And it spits out: cannot open 'label/disk3' : no such GEOM provider
must be full path or shorthand device name.


I then did zpool create tank raidz ad8 ad10 ad14 and it accepted it. Though nothing happened, is something supposed to happen?
 
SirDice said:
Only if you have a decent machine with plenty of memory (>2GB).
Click to expand...

I forgot about the RAM limitations :). ZFS performance is also better on amd64.

Try using the complete path, like /dev/label/disk1. It should work if the disks are labeled properly.

Nothing pops up by default when a pool is created. Try # zpool status to look at the pools.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top