Hello everyone!

BuckiTech

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Aug 22, 2019
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G'day y'all!

I'm Hannah, from Germany. I recently decided to build a server system for my company BuckiTech, and decided on FreeNAS. Great looking UI, ease of use, and - free.
As I have some problems with the configuration I've decided upon registering on the Forum to ask about help.

System Components (Avocado): Im bad at naming stuff lol
  • CPU: 2x Intel Xeon X5670
  • Cooling: 2x Supermicro SNK-P0040AP4
  • Mainboard: TYAN S7012
  • RAM: 4x 16GB 1666MHz ECC
  • Storage:
    - Verbatim 128GB SSD
    - 4x 3TB WD Red
  • PSU: Corsair RMx650 (Got the extra CPU Connector off eBay for 2 Euros)
I would love to have my Hard Drives in RAID 10! :) Beside FreeNAS, I will also host Plesk on it, and definitely get Debian 8, which I've been using for quiet a while for my (rented) Servers now.

My "perfectly" working Switch is a 12 Year old Netgear FSM7328s. I should buy an actually working switch... :D

Well, coming to the configuration issues:
I can not access the Web interface over the IP I configured, and on which FreeNAS is saying that it is accessible. I have no idea why. I reconfigured it several times, but it does not work at all. The documentation also didn't really help. Any ideas? If you need to know something, make sure to ask!

Okay, thanks for reading! :P

Best Regards,
Hannah <3
 

sretalla

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- 4x 3TB WD Red
I would love to have my Hard Drives in RAID 10!
Your safest option is RAIDZ2, which allows for any 2 drives to fail with no data loss.
The equivalent of RAID10 would be a pool of 2 mirrored VDEVs, which allows for one failure per VDEV, so if the wrong two drives fail at the same time, it's off to restoring the backups.

My "perfectly" working Switch is a 12 Year old Netgear FSM7328s. I should buy an actually working switch...
If it's not broken, why fix it? At most you could think of looking out for sale time (like black friday) and get one when the time is right.

I will also host Plesk on it, and definitely get Debian 8
These will be VMs, but with only 16GB of RAM, you may be a little light depending on the memory demands of plesk and whatever you run in debian. Perhaps consider looking for ports that could run in a jail with less overhead. (or increase the memory a bit.

I can not access the Web interface over the IP I configured, and on which FreeNAS is saying that it is accessible. I have no idea why. I reconfigured it several times, but it does not work at all.
Can you get to a shell? if so please look at (and share if you can) the output from ifconfig
 

BuckiTech

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Aug 22, 2019
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Your safest option is RAIDZ2, which allows for any 2 drives to fail with no data loss.
The equivalent of RAID10 would be a pool of 2 mirrored VDEVs, which allows for one failure per VDEV, so if the wrong two drives fail at the same time, it's off to restoring the backups.


If it's not broken, why fix it? At most you could think of looking out for sale time (like black friday) and get one when the time is right.


These will be VMs, but with only 16GB of RAM, you may be a little light depending on the memory demands of plesk and whatever you run in debian. Perhaps consider looking for ports that could run in a jail with less overhead. (or increase the memory a bit.


Can you get to a shell? if so please look at (and share if you can) the output from ifconfig

Heya!

I opened up and tried to find the issue with the Switch. After investigating, we decided to have the switch switched out (no pun intended) and this solved the issue. Paid a little overprice, but whatever. It seems that the 2 used gigabit ports are broken.
I can finally access the webinterface.

I will take a look at RAIDZ2 for sure, thanks for letting me know about that! :)

About the VM's, we still did not decide on the amount of RAM and Cores / Threads for each VM, but we will figure that out ourselves though. But I know that Plesk does not take up much memory.

Your answer and tips are much appreciated. Thanks for that! <3

Best Regards,
Hannah <3
 

BuckiTech

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Aug 22, 2019
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5
Your safest option is RAIDZ2, which allows for any 2 drives to fail with no data loss.
The equivalent of RAID10 would be a pool of 2 mirrored VDEVs, which allows for one failure per VDEV, so if the wrong two drives fail at the same time, it's off to restoring the backups. ifconfig

So in a nutshell, like this?
1566495044817.png
 

sretalla

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Yes, that looks right... for the mirrored VDEVs option. (RAID10 or similar)

If you want to be able to lose any 2 disks, you need a single VDEV of RAIDZ2.
 

BuckiTech

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Aug 22, 2019
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5
Hi,

I'm running into a problem. I have removed FreeNAS from both my USB Sticks, the one from the motherboard and the one for installing OS's.
I disconnected all Hard Drives and the SSD from the Mainboard.
Both USB Sticks are completely formatted.

Now, I'm trying to install unRAID, just because I'm trying to compare it to FreeNAS, as I'm still unsure myself of which choice I will take. Though, after making the unRAID Bootstick, putting it into the USB Port, I'm booting from that unRAID stick (That I have re-formatted and reinstalled unRAID several times), I'm getting greeted with:

"This is a FreeNAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted."

I can NOT get rid of that message. It's like FreeNAS pinned itself down onto the system. BIOS-Reset also did not help at all. I can't find a TRACE of FreeNAS on both USB sticks, though always if I try to install any different OS than FreeNAS, it wont let me.

Any Ideas?

Best Regards,
Hannah
 

BuckiTech

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Aug 22, 2019
Messages
5
Hi,

Using different USBs fixed the issue. Still weird as hell
Let's hope the team likes FreeNAS more than unRAID, cause I do. But it's not my own decision on what the system(s) will run.

Best Regards,
Hannah
 

sretalla

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ZFS writes to parts of the disk headers that other filesystems don't. Most operating systems (that don't handle ZFS) don't know about that and don't touch those blocks when wiping.

You can wipe disks in a ZFS aware OS like FreeNAS to clean them properly.
 
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