HP MicroServer and WOL

[divB]

Hello,

I just bought a new HP Microserver to act as a backup NAS for an existing infrastructure. Wake-On-LAN is thus a fundamental requirement.

When I tried it out yesterday it did not work. This is a catastrophe :-( I tried waking up using etherwake and wakeonlan on a Linux box.

Anyone using a Microserver and can confirm/dis-confirm this? Is there anything I can do about (except dropping the Microserver)?

Regards,
divB

 

[peterh]

Why do you want to shut down the zfs filer ?

 

[divB]

[...]to act as a backup NAS for an existing infrastructure[...]

The system should be switched on for 30-60 min max. per day (duration of the backup)

 

[cyberjock]

A month or two ago someone had an issue with WOL. Support for WOL is hit and miss and doesnt work on all NICs that are supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS. Somewhere someone bought a new NIC and that solved the problem. My first guess would be Intel NIC since they are supported very well in FreeBSD. But if you want to know the exact card used I'd search the forums. There's alot of previous open and closed tickets from various NICs having issues with WOL.

See:
https://support.freenas.org/ticket/908
https://support.freenas.org/ticket/878

Overall, my guess would be that WOL isn't being given a high priority because FreeNAS is designed to be online 24x7. You won't get midnight emails, midnight maintenance, or any of the other features FreeNAS uses because you only run the server for an hour a day. To be honest your server will do what you want(without the WOL apparently) but the intent of your server was not what the FreeNAS developers intended. Because developer resources are so limited they have to pick and choose the important issues to tackle. Your issue is likely not high on their priority because FreeNAS isn't on 24x7.

For instance, how do you do a ZFS scrub if the system is never on for more than an hour a day? ZFS scrubs should be planned maintenance.

In your shoes, I'd consider if you really want the server to startup/shutdown every day. It may be that FreeNAS is not the optimum product for you. Also, see below...

Here's my secret.. I have a machine that is up 24x7 for other uses. I installed VM Virtualbox on it and created a FreeNAS virtual machine. I actually backup my desktop, HTPC and laptop to it twice a week. It's my "experimental" FreeNAS VM. I can take snapshots if I need to, the performance isn't stellar but plenty fast enough for backups and I don't have to run another machine 24x7 for my backups. Keep in mind that trying to run ZFS raid is pointless in this function. ZFS can do its own scrubs when it needs to along with any other maintenance. I do it this way because backups are being taken, and while they may not be 100% rock hard reliable because you are doing a VM, it's a happy medium between cost and benefits. I have a backup that I could rely on if I needed it, but I haven't needed them. I've tested them and they've worked fine. Just an idea to think about. It may not work for you depending on how much data you need to backup. It works great for me even though the VM is running on a hardware RAID6 array.

 

[divB]

Hi, thanks for your reply!

I understand about the WOL. For now, I use an IP Power-Switch to turn on/off the machine. However, I'd prefer to not depend on it.

Concerning "the right product": Hmm, I am currently in the progress of migrating data. If it turns out that FreeNAS will indeed not be the right solution for me I would need to change as soon as possible to Debian.

The solution about the VM is no solution for me. The current situation is: 24x7 Linux Server (1 TB System+Data on RAID1) and Multimedia (2 TB, non-redundant). It runs several OpenVZ containers (internal and external services).

There is a backup server (identical hardware), except there are only cheap old IDE drives (2x320G + 1x200G). Most system/data is rsync'ed once a week and it's possible to live-migrate some containers.

Backup is done daily on the main server to 2 USB drives. That's terribly slow. Also, I want to keep old backups as long as there is free space. Currently I use 'rsync --dest-links' which is very slow and unflexible.

This backup shall be replaced by the FreeNAS box. And as you can see, this box should notbe 24x7 because the server already is (and takes about 200W).

When choosing between FreeNAS and Debian, I decided for FreeNAS for two reasons:
- ZFS: I can get rid of the ugly 'rsync --dest-links' solution but instead, just rsync onto it and manually take a snapshot afterwards
- Ready appliance which fits on a USB stick

Currently I setup the NAS box with FreeNAS and already transferred to 2 TB multimedia to ZFS.
The next step would be to create a 3x2 TB RAIDz for all the data etc.

Switching to Debian would need to be done ASAP, but there I'd have to manually setup the system and most problematic: I'd still need to take these ugly and slow rsync --dest-links stuff for having multiple backups ...

Maybe you can once again give me a hint for my decision?


PS: This is hobbyist/private/home system, but of course with important personal data ;-)

PPS: I would do scrubbing etc. from time to time from an external cronjob: switch on server, issue scrub command, switch down

 

[cyberjock]

I really don't have any advice. Your limitations are enough to know that you're the best person to make your decision :P

 

[Stephens]

What's the answer to peterh's question?

 

[cyberjock]

I think the answer is because the OP wants to save electricity. He mentioned that his server uses 200w right now, so that implies that he's trying to conserve electricity.

 

[srhowl]

I'm running an HP Microserver (N36L) and have finally managed to get WOL to work with FreeNas 8.3.

BUT the only way I did it was to buy an new NIC (Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter - PCI Express).

 

[OdiYan]

Try this

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/wake-on-lan.13508/#post-64133