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Is there any advantage to running FreeBSD off a USB stick with the rest of the drives being the ZFS pools? Friend came through again with selling off a startup workstation: Supermicro X10SRM-F board and Xeon v4 in a cheap Lian-Li case, and it's already got a USB socket on one of the mobo headers.
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Jun 30, 2020 23:53
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Mecha posted:Is there any advantage to running FreeBSD off a USB stick with the rest of the drives being the ZFS pools? Friend came through again with selling off a startup workstation: Supermicro X10SRM-F board and Xeon v4 in a cheap Lian-Li case, and it's already got a USB socket on one of the mobo headers. That used to be the recommended method of running FreeNAS. For my latest install I used a SSD, though, since I worried about general lifespan of flash drives.
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Jul 1, 2020 00:10
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Mecha posted:Is there any advantage to running FreeBSD off a USB stick with the rest of the drives being the ZFS pools? Friend came through again with selling off a startup workstation: Supermicro X10SRM-F board and Xeon v4 in a cheap Lian-Li case, and it's already got a USB socket on one of the mobo headers. The only real advantage is not using up a SATA port. That's it. And you're accepting a higher probability of OS drive failure than using a HDD/SSD as a tradeoff (though you could do mirrored USB drives to mitigate that), and most likely slower boot times, if you care about that. FWIW, USB sticks are no longer recommended for FreeNAS, though they don't really give a whole lot of background as to why.
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Jul 1, 2020 00:27
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I've always assumed for flash memory like USB and SD-Cards, it's generally reliable enough for home use if the OS isn't doing a lot of writes to it all day long. On the other hand a 120Gbyte SSD is like $39AUD these days so...
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Jul 1, 2020 00:42
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BurgerQuest posted:On the other hand a 120Gbyte SSD is like $39AUD these days so... I picked up a bunch of 16GB SSD for $5 each a couple years ago. Supposedly early SSDs were unreliable but they're still kicking around. Too bad you can't boot from S3 yet. Just store the access keys and S3:url in the BIOS and boom. Might be a little slow to recover from a power outage longer than your UPS can handle, but yeah
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Jul 1, 2020 01:21
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Hadlock posted:I picked up a bunch of 16GB SSD for $5 each a couple years ago. Supposedly early SSDs were unreliable but they're still kicking around. 16tb that sounds... oh 16gb that makes more sense.
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Jul 1, 2020 01:31
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I'll throw up an SA mart page and you can buy them all from me for $15 each
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Jul 1, 2020 02:08
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Hadlock posted:Too bad you can't boot from S3 yet. Just store the access keys and S3:url in the BIOS and boom. Might be a little slow to recover from a power outage longer than your UPS can handle, but yeah I can totally see this being a thing, but my server mostly serves my home... so if the power goes out and comes back, but the internet is still out, I'd like it to boot :s
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Jul 1, 2020 02:19
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Hadlock posted:Too bad you can't boot from S3 yet. Just store the access keys and S3:url in the BIOS and boom. Might be a little slow to recover from a power outage longer than your UPS can handle, but yeah If you're interested in that sort of thing, you can install it to a USB drive and boot from there as an experiment before committing to warranty voiding.
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Jul 1, 2020 03:04
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iPXE can also run from your router so no need for the internet per se. config updates would be a PITA. Edit: as in you can pretty trivially enable it and host the files you need on your router. Besides usb it’s pretty common to bootstrap iPXE from PXE using dnsmasq, which has a built in tftp server. It’s non invasive and it’s something I’ve done in openwrt and edgerouters. freeasinbeer fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Jul 1, 2020 |
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Jul 1, 2020 03:25
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Mecha posted:Is there any advantage to running FreeBSD off a USB stick with the rest of the drives being the ZFS pools? Friend came through again with selling off a startup workstation: Supermicro X10SRM-F board and Xeon v4 in a cheap Lian-Li case, and it's already got a USB socket on one of the mobo headers. Another option is the M.2 slot on your motherboard, based on the manual it sounds like NVMe drive won't disable a SATA port. Intel Optane 16GB sticks are quite cheap.
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Jul 1, 2020 08:48
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Speed of the drive doesnt matter do just buy a sata usb enclosure and go to town
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Jul 1, 2020 10:16
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Rexxed posted:That used to be the recommended method of running FreeNAS. For my latest install I used a SSD, though, since I worried about general lifespan of flash drives. So unless you do an obscene amount of saving, or get the absolutely lowest tier of flash that probably shouldn't have passed binning, it shouldn't really be an issue. There is one caveat to this, which comes up in responding to this: DrDork posted:FWIW, USB sticks are no longer recommended for FreeNAS, though they don't really give a whole lot of background as to why. Hadlock posted:I picked up a bunch of 16GB SSD for $5 each a couple years ago. Supposedly early SSDs were unreliable but they're still kicking around. freeasinbeer posted:iPXE can also run from your router so no need for the internet per se. config updates would be a PITA. iPXE, properly configured, also needs DHCP Option 67 - and those usually aren't available on most CPE.
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Jul 1, 2020 10:30
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A USB to sata cable also could let you trivially hook up a cheap ssd inside whatever case you have. Then just 3m command strip or velcro it in place. Or don't it doesn't matter.
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Jul 1, 2020 16:41
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Rexxed posted:Yeah there's this stupid chart now (I mean it's good, only stupid because they got caught sneaking SMR in and sowing mistrust): I just just shucked a WD Elements 8tb and it was a white label "EMAZ".  Definitely CMR, yes? Steakandchips fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jul 1, 2020 |
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Jul 1, 2020 16:57
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As someone who has to routinely deal with flash drives as boot devices failing (though this is ESXi) yeah, don't if you don't ABSOLUTELY have to.
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Jul 1, 2020 17:02
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Steakandchips posted:I just just shucked a WD Elements 8tb and it was a white label "EMAZ". According to WD there's no 8TB SMR disks, so unless they're lying again, yes.
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Jul 1, 2020 17:29
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Crunchy Black posted:As someone who has to routinely deal with flash drives as boot devices failing (though this is ESXi) yeah, don't if you don't ABSOLUTELY have to. Mirrored SD cards for esxi boot is pretty standard and works fine. ESXi doesn't even crash if it loses its boot drive
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Jul 1, 2020 18:46
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HalloKitty posted:Mirrored SD cards for esxi boot is pretty standard and works fine. ESXi doesn't even crash if it loses its boot drive  The way of the future.
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Jul 1, 2020 18:52
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That's actually what I hate about the little bastards. They don't have built-in diagnostics. the internal controllers on the hosts don't have any way of seeing their status, and they never get used, until you go to reboot a host. Then it won't boot because at some unknown time in the last few hundred days, both cards hosed off. Last time I looked, it was like an extra $400 on a $30k host to boot from dual SSDs with an internal RAID controller, and I'll cheerfully pay that for peace of mind.
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Jul 1, 2020 22:31
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I think FreeNAS killed 3 or 4 different USB sticks before I finally put it on a high-endurance SD card in an adapter, where it's been holding steady for several months now. I still don't know if it was just flakey ports on my motherboard or if something else was damaging the data on D. Ebdrup posted:This is a complete guess, but I would summize that the reason they've stopped recommending USB drives is because most people didn't switch the log and graph data generated by FreeNAS to go to the storage pool, but instead left it the default which means it'd be written to the USB stick. ........gently caress. Well, I will say that one thing that does seem to work pretty well when using a boot USB is the recovery procedure. Throw a fresh FreeNAS onto another stick, boot into the web UI, apply the backup file you definitely take regularly and store in a safe place for just such an occasion. I'd say it was worth it to burn through $4 USB sticks rather than whatever the cheapest SSD is, but if an SSD never breaks in the first place then I suppose it's moot. Here's something unexpected: As I continue to gather up 8TB drives for my new pool, I just noticed that the one I got today had an extra attribute in its smartctl output just called 'unknown attribute'. Reading around a bit and updating my drivedb.h file revealed that it was a Helium Level reading, which none of the other 5 drive I have show. What do y'all think that means? Is that actually supposed to do something or is it just handwavey bullshit like putting nitrogen in my tires? I haven't actually opened any of them up yet, I wonder if this one is a 'real' Red and the rest are going to be white labels...
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Jul 1, 2020 22:43
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Helium in drives is A Real Thing and has been around for a while. According to Backblaze's blog it results in a 20% reduction in drag on the platters, so lower power consumption. I could have sworn some manufacturers were claiming it let them get the heads even closer to the disk surface.
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Jul 1, 2020 23:00
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Last time I looked, it was like an extra $400 on a $30k host to boot from dual SSDs with an internal RAID controller, and I'll cheerfully pay that for peace of mind. And for home users a 32GB SSD can be had for as little as $15 off Amazon. USB drives made sense for a long time when SSDs were expensive, or where you don't have any additional SATA ports / space in your case for yet another 3.5" spinner, but in today's market a cheap SSD is a much better option in most cases. Except you may not have a pile of spare 32GB SSD's sitting in a drawer like most of us probably do USB sticks. Takes No Damage posted:What do y'all think that means? Is that actually supposed to do something or is it just handwavey bullshit like putting nitrogen in my tires? I haven't actually opened any of them up yet, I wonder if this one is a 'real' Red and the rest are going to be white labels... Yeah, as said above, helium-filled drives have been A Thing for a while now. They used to be the province of only the highest-end drives, but like everything else, it's trickled down the stack slowly. And, much like nitrogen in tires, while it's not a game-changing difference, it does have measurable positive impacts on things and isn't just handwavey bullshit.
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Jul 1, 2020 23:27
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I still have gear that runs off CF cards purchased a decade ago, and which receive regular writes, but I'm pretty sure even that's a bit long in the tooth as far as write endurance goes, so I've got a strategy ready for when that inevitably fails.
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Jul 1, 2020 23:34
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I'm running my FreeNAS off of SATA DOMs, you can get them super cheap off eBay and they are fairly reliable.
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Jul 2, 2020 00:10
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Ran different USB drives for ESXi and for FreeNAS and they just plain stopped working outright one day and I didn't really have a problem besides the annoyance of having to reflash a new USB drive while my wife was annoyed that she couldn't watch random-rear end movies again for the evening. But WAF is an important SLA that does matter if you ask me for home storage. One can always try running a SATADOM for a boot drive as well. <- e;fb
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Jul 2, 2020 00:14
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wolrah posted:You could definitely do this with iPXE. You can flash it directly to a NIC's boot ROM with a HTTPS URL to pull a config file from and go from there. This is super cool, I did not know this was an option, thanks
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Jul 2, 2020 02:55
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Do we have any opinion on QNAP? I'm looking at their 2020 product stack and edging towards them over Synology.
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Jul 2, 2020 05:06
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SwissArmyDruid posted:Do we have any opinion on QNAP? I'm looking at their 2020 product stack and edging towards them over Synology. I really like my little TVS-471. I would definitely buy another QNAP. Had bad exp with Synology previously so I’m wary to try them again. If i strayed from QNAP, it’d be to a FreeNAS device.
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Jul 2, 2020 05:32
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Takes No Damage posted:I think FreeNAS killed 3 or 4 different USB sticks before I finally put it on a high-endurance SD card in an adapter, where it's been holding steady for several months now. I still don't know if it was just flakey ports on my motherboard or if something else was damaging the data on Helium filled drives have been around for a while, to help with drag/platter density. Don't ever open a helium filled drive. It's definitely not unneccessary engineering, and can reduce temps too. Helium filled drives are overall pretty great, although I imagine data recovery would be even more of a bitch
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Jul 2, 2020 07:57
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HalloKitty posted:, although I imagine data recovery would be even more of a bitch OK Wilber, Break's up, It's time to go back in the chamber *squeaks* Yes Sir *squeaks*
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Jul 2, 2020 08:05
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I had bad experience setting up OMV on an USB stick, maybe the ones I have are just poo poo but it took forever to install and then after 3 days I rebooted the server and the stick just stopped appearing in the system altogether. At that point I thought gently caress it and put an extra NVMe stick in there, been running without a problem since and can use it for Docker and VMs, too.
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Jul 2, 2020 08:54
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rufius posted:I really like my little TVS-471. I would definitely buy another QNAP. Had bad exp with Synology previously so I’m wary to try them again.
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Jul 2, 2020 15:44
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I've got a little 2-bay QNAP that works well for my home use. Pretty nice little appliance NAS. You'll find more support/community around Synology than QNAP but I've still been able to get what I need for it.
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Jul 2, 2020 15:49
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I've got a full sized metal cased AData UV131 USB drive in the internal USB port of my TS430 running Unraid and it's been solid for 2 years so far. The drive wasn't even new when I started using it for this and isn't especially high endurance (data wise at least).
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Jul 2, 2020 16:08
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EssOEss posted:1 day after I install Windows version 2004, Microsoft publishes a notice that Storage Spaces is bugged now and RIP your data. It gets better. They just released a "troubleshooter" wizard that's supposed to fix it. All it does is BSOD my PC. Glad I had backups! And here I was thinking all those "Oh I never install Windows Updates anymore" people were cranks...
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Jul 2, 2020 17:23
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rufius posted:I really like my little TVS-471. I would definitely buy another QNAP. Had bad exp with Synology previously so I’m wary to try them again. Also QNAP seem to be the only ones pushing 2.5/5 gigabit interfaces on their NASes, or have the provisions to upgrade with the built-in PCIe slot, which appeals to my sense of futureproofing. Which makes it all the more bizarre to me the other NAS oems aren't doing the same, considering that the extra cost over gigabit is like... a banana. SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 19:09
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SwissArmyDruid posted:Also QNAP seem to be the only ones pushing 2.5/5 gigabit interfaces on their NASes, or have the provisions to upgrade with the built-in PCIe slot, which appeals to my sense of futureproofing. Yeah, but that's a banana they could keep, and a feature they can hold off on implementing now so that when it's actually useful they can use it as a carrot to get you to upgrade to a newer / higher end model. And for most home users, 1GbE is more than enough anyhow. And I think that's the real issue: it's just not useful right now. There are only a handful of routers / switches with >1GbE ports on them, and they're all stupid expensive for what they are (the Netgear AX6000 is loving $470 and has only 1 2.5/5GbE port. The 5-port XS505M is $350. And so on). If you're a home user, that's probably too expensive to bother with, especially when 10Gb fiber is faster and cheaper. If you're a business user, legit 10GbE isn't much more expensive, and obviously is considerably faster. 2.5/5Gig Ethernet just occupies a pretty poor price:performance spot right now. It needs to get a lot cheaper before most OEMs are really going to bother adding it into anything more than their most expensive products.
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Jul 2, 2020 19:31
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EssOEss posted:It gets better. They just released a "troubleshooter" wizard that's supposed to fix it. All it does is BSOD my PC. Glad I had backups! I take it you're trying to get your data off, so you can move to.. well, anything else?
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Jul 2, 2020 20:28
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I am considering it but don't really see many obvious options. For Windows there is DrivePool but that's some 1-man labor of love that I would not trust more than Storage Spaces. Everything else seems non-Windows and I kind of need to have Windows on this machine. Right now I think I will just keep on trucking with Storage Spaces. Or have I missed a Windows-compatible option I should consider?
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Jul 2, 2020 21:28
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