Rockstor, a Linux and BTRFS Based NAS Solution

[ChuckMcM]

The only data protection options I could find were Raid 1, and 10. (raid 0 is a performance option) and as data loss on attempting to re-silver a 3TB mirror is 1 in 5, data protection here is not enterprise quality yet).

The UI stuff is great, but the tricky bit about building a storage system is not provisioning it, or getting the access protocols right, it is all about finding all the ways that data can be destroyed (both silently and noisily) and guarding against them. So if you want to stick with the Enterprise target, then you need something like the ZFS On Linux page which describes every way you can get data zapped and how you will prevent that from happening.

If you want to be just an off the shelf "hey here's something that will make your access point into something like a NAS device." then you get to lose data when a disk goes bad, or a memory chip goes bad, or a network cable is loose, or the powersupply cuts out, or the cat knocks it off the table etc.

[schakrava]

Thank you, I couldn't agree more. It's a tall order and we have work cut out.

I've started to do some DR testing myself, but it will take a little while to publish our findings and recommendations.

[feld]

Where did you get your hilarious "data loss on attempting to re-silver a 3TB mirror is 1 in 5" statistic from?

[rbanffy]

> raid 0 is a performance option

Once I won a bet that RAID 1 was actually faster than RAID 0 on a given scenario.

[RickHull]

My very first questions regarding a potential storage solution revolve around data loss:

    1. Can we enumerate the data loss scenarios?
    2. How is drive failure handled?
    3. How may data be corrupted and such corruption detected?
    4. For every data loss scenario, what is the recovery procedure?

Here is all I could find: http://rockstor.com/docs/faq.html#how-do-i-prevent-data-loss...

Of course, there is a wealth of information on such questions for standard RAID, but I would suggest for marketing purposes that rockstor synthesize available information (from the many relevant layers of data management) in a coherent fashion, specific to their product. It doesn't have to be deep, but it should be at least minimally comprehensive and broad, with pointers to more detailed, layer-specific information.

Also, it's fine if the recovery scenario is "restore from backup" for e.g. the scenario where data is deleted by an authorized user. If so, there should be at least a minimal "backup story".

[schakrava]

That is great feedback for us. I've added a documentation issue with your feedback: https://github.com/rockstor/rockstor-doc/issues/37

We have added appliances <-> appliance replication recently, which can play an important role in recovering from bigger disasters.

We'll have all that documented. Please feel free to participate on our github.

[yawniek]

the gui looks pretty cool. personally i would not trust btrfs for a nas. i have made not the best experience while running various production servers with btrfs. i switched (back) to zfs and never looked back, it its just better in every regard.

i also administer a freenas box for a small business and this stuff is rock solid, i would only wish a _easy_ solution to get the permission stuff right in a multi user setting.

none the less, thumbs up for creating this, cool stuff!

[nisa]

I'm in the process to rolling out btrfs on a lot of production servers (no raid, just subvolumes and compression) using Ubuntu 14.04 - what problems did you encounter with btrfs?

[schakrava]

Thanks. We believe it's a matter of short time before btrfs will be trusted enough.

Can you elaborate on the permission-stuff issue you have? We'd love to get it right in Rockstor.

[polarix]

> better in every regard

Can't remove raidz's from zpools, but `btrfs device delete` exists.

[victorhooi]

Interesting =).

I'm currently running Freenas with ZFS.

Would be curious to see how this compares.

The one thing missing for me on FreeNAS is some kind of file search/indexing feature.

I wonder if the fact that this is Linux based will make adding something like that easier.

[schakrava]

Perhaps. I have some ideas about search features. We can also get some cool stats efficiently from btrfs trees also. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it possible for you to give more input on search/indexing that you wish to see? You can even write to us directly -- [e-mail] or file an issue on github: https://github.com/rockstor/rockstor-core

[zachberger]

All three of the server hardware suggestions are discontinued.

[gourneau]

Anyone have suggestions for better servers? I wonder if Rockstore would work well with the backblaze case. Maybe some of the OCP cases would work. Anyone played with those?

[razster]

Demo page gives me an error message. Sends me to https://50.0.94.5/

[schakrava]

Yes, it's a simple redirect. that's where the demo is hosted for now.

[aliamir]

This looks pretty cool. Easier to use and nice gui.

[akclr]

Good stuff guys!

[jms703]

no afp support?

[sciurus]

Since Apple has supported SMB for a long time, and actually made it the default protocol in 10.9, is there much need for AFP?

[schakrava]

No, but does is suggestion from our blog work for you?

http://rockstor.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/backup-mac-folders-...

[madmaze]

Guys, you might want to remove that RSA Private Key. https://github.com/rockstor/rockstor-core/tree/master/certs

[schakrava]

Thank you and appreciate your issue submission on github. We'll fix this right away.