How important to upgrade FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201506292130 ?

[NorCalTechSupport]

Good morning FrrNAS Gurus. I have a most awesome FreeNAS server with 35TB shared storage (20 X 4TB SAS HDD) and it is running beautifully with FreeNAS version FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201506292130.

Every morning I get an email telling me "A new update is available for the FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE train" is available. I am in production now with approximately 40 ESXi 5.5 VMs (mostly MS Server 2008R2 Data Center) so I would hate to shut down unless I hear back from Cyberjock or any other long time user urging me to bite the bullet and suspend all the VMs and put the host(s) into maintenance mode.

By the way I love my FreeNAS SAN more and more every day and other entities in my circle who we allow to upgrade some of the servers just can't believe how fast we can take snapshots or just get work done in general so hip hip horary for FreeNAS. Now to be 100% honest after my FreeNAS came online I started replacing IBM System X3650 M2 (128GB RAM) servers with Lenovo System X3550 M4 (384GB RAM).

Just a couple more questions. My SuperMicro FreeNAS chassis has 128GB RAM and 960GB SSD cache. If I upped the RAM to 256GB would I see any improvement in speed? Would I need to up the cache to 1440GB or 1960GB to keep my awesome performance going?

Thanks for any advice and yes I have plans for greatly upgrading a second SAN to FreeNAS.

 

[mattbbpl]

Just for a point of reference, I'd been avoiding updating for quite a while because it did exactly what I needed it to. Then one day I found I couldn't do something that I thought I should be able to (which turned out to be unrelated to the version anyway), and out of desperation I updated. However, I completely forgot that the LSI drivers had been updated to from version 16 to version 20 and my drivers no longer matched my firmware after the update. So I had to go down that rabbit hole again.

Lesson learned: Plan updates more carefully and allocate time for the unanticipated.

Of course, you're in a production environment so you surely have much stricter controls in your environment. But I bring it up so you can learn from my mistakes just in case.

 

[NorCalTechSupport]

Thanks for reminding me to go slow and be careful. I do have a nice LSI RAID card in IT mode and all the drivers are safely tucked away but no one else chimed in saying the 9.3.1 is way important so I will keep moving on.

 

[jgreco]

I've been holding off a while at 0629 on a number of filers because the firmware update headache isn't worth it. They're filers, appliances, deployed in locations where they can just quietly do their jobs. Updates are nice but only happen a few times a year, if that.

 

[solarisguy]

Are you prepared for a situation that the change would be for worse and you would need to go back? (You would have unhappy users and effectively double the downtime.)

Unless some security or data loss risk suggests going to the current version, I would stay with a version that makes everybody happy.

 

[nightshade00013]

I think the mantra on a production system that is working perfectly well is "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

I update my system to the latest version at this point but have basically been running a testbed so the amount of super important data on it is zero. Once it is fully up and running updates will probably only happen once every six months.

 

[solarisguy]

I think the mantra on a production system that is working perfectly well is "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

I update my system to the latest version at this point but have basically been running a testbed so the amount of super important data on it is zero. Once it is fully up and running updates will probably only happen once every six months.

@nightshade00013, and why would you update in 6 months when everything is working perfectly well?

 

[cyberjock]

Normally, I'd recommend upgrading. Worst case you simply roll back to the previous boot environment if there is a problem.

But, this isn't a normal upgrade. In this case you'll need to update the firmware on your controller. Not hard, but does require some effort on your part. If you have the time to handle the upgrade of the OS and the firmware, I'd definitely recommend it. There are some security fixes that have been implemented, so normally I wouldn't recommend holding off "too long" while waiting.

If you've got a Friday evening where you are bored and can take the system out of production for an hour or two, go for it. At this point 9.3.1 is pretty trustworthy and you're unlikely to have problems on the new version.

 

[nightshade00013]

@nightshade00013, and why would you update in 6 months when everything is working perfectly well?

It's a home system and I don't want to be sitting around on a version that is extremely out of date. I also know some security and performance fixes may be put in place and would rather upgrade at some point than putting it off for an extended period of time and then have something that less people can help figure out what the issue is. I can always roll back to a previous version.

 

[sremick]

Hell, I'm still on 9.2 because I'm too nervous to break what isn't broken. My NAS is all about a jail and I don't have warm fuzzies that 9.2 -> 9.3 isn't going to somehow bork everything and kiss away a few nights.