SOLVED To Dataset or Not

[denaba]

I have used FreeNAS since version 7 I believe. It has been a great experience. Now at the time my FreeNAS system was for basic duties; movies and only one computer system accessing it and only one user. At that time I came here for help setting up my FreeNAS system and the structure was one share, one user and then the folders. No dataset folder was ever created.

But today years later (and as with everything) I am starting to see more computers accessing my FreeNAS system, maybe in the future there will be a need for multiple users to access certain folders and so I watched and watched videos about datasets and then the folders inside them.

My question is since my structure did not contain a dataset folder:

Q1 - would creating one now due more harm than good meaning; if I create the dataset and then move all those shows and pictures inside the dataset folder; would that be a lot of work for the system to do? Hard drive thrashing is what I am concerned with.

Q2 - I am thinking if it is beneficial for future growth, then I am assuming the best practice would be to go to my Windows 10 machines and delete all connection profiles and what not to the FreeNAS, create the dataset using the web interface and then once setup - go and create new connection profiles?

Q3 - or just leave it as is since the old saying, if it ain't broke then don't mess with it.

FreeNAS has been good to me all these years, but as I mentioned reading and watching videos about what datasets do and the future I see......... I would say in the future there will be 2-3 computers accessing the files at one time and I might need to create 2-4 users; some just reading the files while others can edit, delete, etc.

Anyways, just looking for thoughts and opinions on this. Thank you

 

[sretalla]

if I create the dataset and then move all those shows and pictures inside the dataset folder; would that be a lot of work for the system to do? Hard drive thrashing is what I am concerned with.

You will read one copy of the data and write one copy to the new dataset... that will cause what is sometimes called thrashing (read-write-read-write behavior).

Datasets are important units of common concern. As a few examples of the things you might say about such a unit:

- I want all of this data to be shared with these people

- I want to be able to take all of this data back to an agreed point in time if something goes wrong (snapshots)

- I need to be able to replicate this data to another NAS at another location

- I want this data to be limited to x GB of storage

- I want this data to be written with synchronous writes

I am assuming the best practice would be to go to my Windows 10 machines and delete all connection profiles and what not to the FreeNAS, create the dataset using the web interface and then once setup - go and create new connection profiles?

It could be that you can manage it to keep the same directory structure as you have without datasets (would need to rename all of the directories that will become datasets (like home becomes home1 or something), then create the dataset with the original name... the directory structure for FreeNAS will be the same, so potentially nothing to change on the clients.

Q3 - or just leave it as is since the old saying, if it ain't broke then don't mess with it.

I note that your signature mentions BIOS - RAID... If that means that you're using the RAID settings in the BIOS of your motherboard to present your disks as a consolidated RAID volume to FreeNAS, you're headed for trouble there. Please consider changing your approach entirely to make the disks directly visible to FreeNAS and use ZFS RAID to do the job of consolidating the disks into pools. This will mean the need to backup and restore the data to somewhere else, so I understand not trivial, but if it is how I think, you're at real risk of data loss.

 

[denaba]

Thank you for the answers you provided sretalla. I needed to update my FreeNAS sig, I got rid of RAID a long time ago and I am using ZFS.

Looking at the first answer of options there are points that the future for me is coming. I will be creating a dataset folder and start the process. What you wrote is what I have been reading over threads and videos, but you put it nicely in one post. So a thank you.

You mentioned the replication to another location (for me to the other FreeNAS system I have) is something I would like to use again. But Snapshots are something else I would like to utilize.

One more question, would it make sense to make datasets for each folder I have. Currently I have (not named like this though) Folder A, Folder B, Folder C, Folder D and Folder E. Would it make sense to do one for each or make one and have all those folders within one dataset folder? Right now I can see Folder E will be the first folder that I will need to share with certain people in the house (wife's folder) while all of us can access the rest of the folders.

Anyways, thank you sretalla. Some work to be done.

 

[sretalla]

Would it make sense to do one for each or make one and have all those folders within one dataset folder?

If you would always restore from a snapshot to all of them at the same time, then all together. If you want to be able to restore from a snapshot for just one of the folders, it's better to have them separate... also different schedules for snapshots for different folders could be something that makes sense, so separate datasets for that reason too.

 

[denaba]

OK, I have large folders. You know, the wife videos every second of our child's life so one folder has tons of videos. The structure currently

Folder A - videos of child
Folder B - all papers, PDF's, Excel (jeez oldest is from 1999)
Folder C - images of our computers
Folder D - TV Shows
Folder E - all of our music recorded at highest format

Reading what you said it looks like making separate ones makes sense since like Folder A gets updated daily while images gets done once a month. TV shows gets a new file once a week and music grows once a month. B gets files everyday as well. So what you mentioned I can see different schedules here.

I have only had one issue once before, but I can say FreeNAS has been rock solid 99.99% for me. I never did snapshots since I just ran a backup to another system; mirror. I'd like to use Rsync again so again, what you mentioned doing datasets helps this.

Thank you very much!!