FreeNASBob
Patron
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2014
- Messages
- 226
I know there have been a lot of reports of this issue lately, but I wanted to add my experience here so that others can benefit from my mistakes.
I built a FreeNAS box using the ASRock Rack C2550D4I board back in 2014. Just like so many others, my board lasted about 2 years at which point it would not boot any more. I thought it was the watchdog bug, but it turned out that the voltage sensors had failed (another common thing with these boards). Luckily I live close enough to ASRock that I went and exchanged my board in-person. As luck would have it, the board they gave me wouldn't even POST. At that point I was thinking, "Awww hell, it's something in my setup and not the ASRock." I was wrong. I got out the PSU testing equipment and verified the PSU checked out. Tried different RAM. I even tried no RAM just to see if I'd get an error. Nothing. The board simply won't even power on at all. IPMI works, though, and you can see the same symptom as my original failed board: some of the voltage sensors report "Not Available".
So not only did ASRock suffer from a major product defect, but they're replacing these RMA boards with more defective boards. There's no way they even tested this board before giving it to me. They would have seen right away that it was also defective. I'm starting to wonder if somebody at ASRock shorted Asrock, Inc. stock and is now solidifying their position. I don't know why else you'd willingly sabotage any good name you had in the industry by refusing to address MAJOR bugs in your hardware and even replacing defective hardware with more product you already know is defective.
I think the sum of people's experiences with ASRock at this point justifies steering new users away from ASRock hardware for mission-critical applications. If there was ever a need to make sure that a company appeared on some "Not Recommended" list of hardware for FreeNAS, this is it.
I built a FreeNAS box using the ASRock Rack C2550D4I board back in 2014. Just like so many others, my board lasted about 2 years at which point it would not boot any more. I thought it was the watchdog bug, but it turned out that the voltage sensors had failed (another common thing with these boards). Luckily I live close enough to ASRock that I went and exchanged my board in-person. As luck would have it, the board they gave me wouldn't even POST. At that point I was thinking, "Awww hell, it's something in my setup and not the ASRock." I was wrong. I got out the PSU testing equipment and verified the PSU checked out. Tried different RAM. I even tried no RAM just to see if I'd get an error. Nothing. The board simply won't even power on at all. IPMI works, though, and you can see the same symptom as my original failed board: some of the voltage sensors report "Not Available".
So not only did ASRock suffer from a major product defect, but they're replacing these RMA boards with more defective boards. There's no way they even tested this board before giving it to me. They would have seen right away that it was also defective. I'm starting to wonder if somebody at ASRock shorted Asrock, Inc. stock and is now solidifying their position. I don't know why else you'd willingly sabotage any good name you had in the industry by refusing to address MAJOR bugs in your hardware and even replacing defective hardware with more product you already know is defective.
I think the sum of people's experiences with ASRock at this point justifies steering new users away from ASRock hardware for mission-critical applications. If there was ever a need to make sure that a company appeared on some "Not Recommended" list of hardware for FreeNAS, this is it.