SteveAndBelle
Cadet
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2014
- Messages
- 7
Hi all.
Couple of months ago I upgraded my NAS and decided to go down the HP N54L & FreeNAS route. I was running a ReadyNAS NV+ with 4 x 2TB drives for many years but had it running at about 95% capacity for far too long. The network is very simple... Modem/Router & NAS connected to a big fat 48-Port Gigabit POE Cisco switch currently feeding only a dozen ports around the house. I have several SONOS zones plus a generic Media Player connected to the Living Room TV. Only really running a single PC for the serious stuff but have a few mobile devices connected wirelessly my wife & I use on a daily basis. Everything was working fine with the ReadyNAS... keeping it super simple and not even bothering with drive mappings I simply accessed the NAS data via the network tree in Windows with only a small delay every now & then and I was fine with that as it was rare I needed to do that. The SONOS extracted FLACs from the 'Music' share without fail and the Media Player happily played large MKVs or raw VOBs from the NAS without any problems either. The NAS was chokka block but running perfectly but I then decided I needed more space so bought the N54L, installed 6 x 4TB HDDs and I'm running FreeNAS from a USB stick... but this is where everything started to go downhill and I'm not sure why :( The SONOS has never liked the new setup and the Media Player used to work but is now refusing to and accessing the Shares via the tree in Windows now takes minutes and sometimes times out telling me it can't access the device. Problem here is that I know the rest of the network is fine because I've been forced to reconnect the old ReadyNAS and it's working perfectly as it used to so that proves something's screwy with FreeNAS or the N54L Microserver.
So, I'm blaming myself for this as the crazy flexibility & security of FreeNAS means there are soooo many options I don't ever need to use so I'm pretty sure I've stuffed something up during the setup. The ReadyNAS was amazing in that you basically just unboxed it, connected it, turned it on, setup a password & created some shares and after waiting a while it was ready to go! I expected the new NAS to be a bit fiddlier but not this bad :( After setting up the hardware I ran FreeNAS and configured it. Keeping it as stupidly simple as possible I setup the volume (one massive ZFS volume spanning all six disks) then tried to setup the Shares but couldn't because I found out I had to setup Datasets first for some reason. I created the Datasets then created CIFS Shares on top of those and pulled all permissions down to the most basic form (allow guest access and checked all access rights). They took quite a while to appear in the Windows network tree but at least I was then able to see them so I started the week long process of copying data from the old to the new.
The copy went perfectly so once done I disconnected the old NAS and pointed SONOS and the Media Player to the new NAS (same static IP address as the old NAS mind you). SONOS wouldn't even resolve the name but entering the IP seemed to force it and then it was happy and would play music without fail... but only for a day. The next day the SONOS couldn't see the library so do anything with it so I'd have to set it back up again and after a few attempts it would eventually start working... but leave it overnight and it would fail again. Connected the old NAS simultaneously with a new/different static IP, pointed SONOS to it and it instantly leapt into action and hasn't failed since. The Media Player was also giving problems and I thought it was an IP conflict so I blew another 3-4 hours troubleshooting that but eventually realised it was the new NAS as it too would work find with the old NAS.
Can anyone shed some light on what could be happening here? I've blown days & days searching & trying to troubleshoot this problem and originally though it was the SONOS but after reconnecting the old NAS and having zero problems I know it's something to do with the new NAS. I've gone through the setup guide so many times but still can't figure out how I should be setting this up as it seems to be designed for everything but those of us who just want the absolute basic setup with zero security. Maybe ZFS is just far too complex for my needs?!?! Maybe I should start again and take it back to a more boring File System?!
I'd greatly appreciate any help or suggestions anyone has because I'm very close to just going out and buying another NAS box with its own built-in OS, filling it with my drives and giving up on FreeNAS altogether. I'm that desperate.
Cheers!
Couple of months ago I upgraded my NAS and decided to go down the HP N54L & FreeNAS route. I was running a ReadyNAS NV+ with 4 x 2TB drives for many years but had it running at about 95% capacity for far too long. The network is very simple... Modem/Router & NAS connected to a big fat 48-Port Gigabit POE Cisco switch currently feeding only a dozen ports around the house. I have several SONOS zones plus a generic Media Player connected to the Living Room TV. Only really running a single PC for the serious stuff but have a few mobile devices connected wirelessly my wife & I use on a daily basis. Everything was working fine with the ReadyNAS... keeping it super simple and not even bothering with drive mappings I simply accessed the NAS data via the network tree in Windows with only a small delay every now & then and I was fine with that as it was rare I needed to do that. The SONOS extracted FLACs from the 'Music' share without fail and the Media Player happily played large MKVs or raw VOBs from the NAS without any problems either. The NAS was chokka block but running perfectly but I then decided I needed more space so bought the N54L, installed 6 x 4TB HDDs and I'm running FreeNAS from a USB stick... but this is where everything started to go downhill and I'm not sure why :( The SONOS has never liked the new setup and the Media Player used to work but is now refusing to and accessing the Shares via the tree in Windows now takes minutes and sometimes times out telling me it can't access the device. Problem here is that I know the rest of the network is fine because I've been forced to reconnect the old ReadyNAS and it's working perfectly as it used to so that proves something's screwy with FreeNAS or the N54L Microserver.
So, I'm blaming myself for this as the crazy flexibility & security of FreeNAS means there are soooo many options I don't ever need to use so I'm pretty sure I've stuffed something up during the setup. The ReadyNAS was amazing in that you basically just unboxed it, connected it, turned it on, setup a password & created some shares and after waiting a while it was ready to go! I expected the new NAS to be a bit fiddlier but not this bad :( After setting up the hardware I ran FreeNAS and configured it. Keeping it as stupidly simple as possible I setup the volume (one massive ZFS volume spanning all six disks) then tried to setup the Shares but couldn't because I found out I had to setup Datasets first for some reason. I created the Datasets then created CIFS Shares on top of those and pulled all permissions down to the most basic form (allow guest access and checked all access rights). They took quite a while to appear in the Windows network tree but at least I was then able to see them so I started the week long process of copying data from the old to the new.
The copy went perfectly so once done I disconnected the old NAS and pointed SONOS and the Media Player to the new NAS (same static IP address as the old NAS mind you). SONOS wouldn't even resolve the name but entering the IP seemed to force it and then it was happy and would play music without fail... but only for a day. The next day the SONOS couldn't see the library so do anything with it so I'd have to set it back up again and after a few attempts it would eventually start working... but leave it overnight and it would fail again. Connected the old NAS simultaneously with a new/different static IP, pointed SONOS to it and it instantly leapt into action and hasn't failed since. The Media Player was also giving problems and I thought it was an IP conflict so I blew another 3-4 hours troubleshooting that but eventually realised it was the new NAS as it too would work find with the old NAS.
Can anyone shed some light on what could be happening here? I've blown days & days searching & trying to troubleshoot this problem and originally though it was the SONOS but after reconnecting the old NAS and having zero problems I know it's something to do with the new NAS. I've gone through the setup guide so many times but still can't figure out how I should be setting this up as it seems to be designed for everything but those of us who just want the absolute basic setup with zero security. Maybe ZFS is just far too complex for my needs?!?! Maybe I should start again and take it back to a more boring File System?!
I'd greatly appreciate any help or suggestions anyone has because I'm very close to just going out and buying another NAS box with its own built-in OS, filling it with my drives and giving up on FreeNAS altogether. I'm that desperate.
Cheers!
