My new NAS components.

[joeschmuck]

I am would really like to use the Asus z10 motherboard. Are you 100 sure it will work with freenas 11?

As stated earlier, 100% sure, we can't state that but I did look at the motherboard specs and it appears to meet the key items we look for which is Intel Chipset, Intel NIC, ECC RAM Support. FreeNAS supports AMD as well but that isn't very popular. Also, that is one rather hefty motherboard and CPU setup you are shooting for, I wouldn't want to afford it, but if I did, I'd be running ESXi 6.5 on it and virtualize FreeNAS and anything else I wanted to run. Of course you would need more RAM to do that. Maybe this is what's on your mind anyway?

And I don't want to talk you back into the Asus board, I think it's up to you to choose what you want. Do you need two CPUs? If you are doing a lot of VM stuff, maybe, but I doubt it. If you were running a small office with VM Windows machines, sure. So you need to pick what you need.

 

[ArgaWoW]

As stated earlier, 100% sure, we can't state that but I did look at the motherboard specs and it appears to meet the key items we look for which is Intel Chipset, Intel NIC, ECC RAM Support. FreeNAS supports AMD as well but that isn't very popular. Also, that is one rather hefty motherboard and CPU setup you are shooting for, I wouldn't want to afford it, but if I did, I'd be running ESXi 6.5 on it and virtualize FreeNAS and anything else I wanted to run. Of course you would need more RAM to do that. Maybe this is what's on your mind anyway?

And I don't want to talk you back into the Asus board, I think it's up to you to choose what you want. Do you need two CPUs? If you are doing a lot of VM stuff, maybe, but I doubt it. If you were running a small office with VM Windows machines, sure. So you need to pick what you need.

Your right, it really seems to be overpowered, so I am locking around for an alternative setup. Also the cpu no longer available for me so I need some other parts.

 

[joeschmuck]

Buy an X11SSM-F motherboard and proper CPU and 32GB RAM, you won't be sorry.

 

[Stux]

And if you need more than 4 cores or 64MB of RAM then get an x10 lga 2011-3 board.

I'd suggest seriously thinking about the X11 as suggested by @joeschmuck

Btw, I'm 100% certain that the original ASUS board *should* work. Doesn't mean it will.

 

[ArgaWoW]

And if you need more than 4 cores or 64MB of RAM then get an x10 lga 2011-3 board.

I'd suggest seriously thinking about the X11 as suggested by @joeschmuck

Btw, I'm 100% certain that the original ASUS board *should* work. Doesn't mean it will.

I guess you know about this treat. That's why I am scared of the asus z10.


https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&sour...6UI0mswgy0pLBZsCw&sig2=copykT5JP6bcsVSQvrCAcQ

But I have ordered it again because with this board I'm am safe for the future. In the first step I will run it with one e5-2620v4 and 32gb ram. If needed I can put a second cpu and 32 gb ram on the board. Let's see how it will work. The parts will be arrive tomorrow. I will tell here what's happened with the z10 and freenas

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[ArgaWoW]

As stated earlier, 100% sure, we can't state that but I did look at the motherboard specs and it appears to meet the key items we look for which is Intel Chipset, Intel NIC, ECC RAM Support. FreeNAS supports AMD as well but that isn't very popular. Also, that is one rather hefty motherboard and CPU setup you are shooting for, I wouldn't want to afford it, but if I did, I'd be running ESXi 6.5 on it and virtualize FreeNAS and anything else I wanted to run. Of course you would need more RAM to do that. Maybe this is what's on your mind anyway?

And I don't want to talk you back into the Asus board, I think it's up to you to choose what you want. Do you need two CPUs? If you are doing a lot of VM stuff, maybe, but I doubt it. If you were running a small office with VM Windows machines, sure. So you need to pick what you need.

Can you give me some advice for an ESXI 6.5 setup? I never have done this before. Will there be a good how two I can follow?

Thank you :)

 

[joeschmuck]

Can you give me some advice for an ESXI 6.5 setup? I never have done this before. Will there be a good how two I can follow?

Thank you :)

The only good advice I can give you is to do a ton of reading before you do anything. I have a thread called something like "My dream system" in the Off Topics section. It's long but explains my trip through ESXi. This is one of those things that you need to invest a lot of time into and not blindly follow some guide or you will meet with failure and I don't want to be the cause of you taking the wrong path. Take your time and do your research.

 

[ArgaWoW]

The only good advice I can give you is to do a ton of reading before you do anything. I have a thread called something like "My dream system" in the Off Topics section. It's long but explains my trip through ESXi. This is one of those things that you need to invest a lot of time into and not blindly follow some guide or you will meet with failure and I don't want to be the cause of you taking the wrong path. Take your time and do your research.

Thanks a lot. Just to be clear:
ESXi is the platform for all your vm' s.
Also Freenas is running in a vm..
Your Datapool is hosted by freenas because of the zfs filesystem and shared (by nfs?) with other vm's you have running on ESXi.
So there is no need to have any vm running within freenas.

I am right with this?

 

[joeschmuck]

Thanks a lot. Just to be clear:
ESXi is the platform for all your vm' s.
Also Freenas is running in a vm..
Your Datapool is hosted by freenas because of the zfs filesystem and shared (by nfs?) with other vm's you have running on ESXi.
So there is no need to have any vm running within freenas.

I am right with this?

Yes, you have this correct.

I see no need to run VMs on FreeNAS except for Plex Media Server and that's only because it runs in a jail so the resources are lighter than if I were to create an Ubuntu VM and run Plex from there. And my argument for running VMs on ESXi vice FreeNAS is because ESXi is a very mature product, creating VMs is very easy, and there is a ton of support for it. This is just the way I see it. My FreeNAS datapool are drives which are pass-thru to the FreeNAS VM.

Here is the one major downside to using ESXi.... Putting too many critical VMs on the machine when you really need to keep them running. In my case I did run my internet firewall also on my ESXi machine but whenever I took the machine down to Maintenance mode then I lost internet connectivity. The family didn't like it. So I have a second ESXi machine running my firewall and a second FreeNAS as my backup for important data. Now I can take down my main ESXi machine and the internet remains running. If I need to take down my second ESXi machine and need internet access as well, I have a router preconfigured and all I need to do is move a few Ethernet cables and plug it in. I made this for when I'm on travel and the system takes a dive, I need to get the family back on the internet or they will all die.

Now I will try running VMs on FreeNAS, it's my duty to give it a try and see how they work. I will not be an expert because I'm certain I will not use them for normal use, but I should be able to operate them and provide some advice periodically.

 

[Stux]

I need to get the family back on the internet or they will all die

So true :)

 

[ArgaWoW]

Yes, you have this correct.

I see no need to run VMs on FreeNAS except for Plex Media Server and that's only because it runs in a jail so the resources are lighter than if I were to create an Ubuntu VM and run Plex from there. And my argument for running VMs on ESXi vice FreeNAS is because ESXi is a very mature product, creating VMs is very easy, and there is a ton of support for it. This is just the way I see it. My FreeNAS datapool are drives which are pass-thru to the FreeNAS VM.

Here is the one major downside to using ESXi.... Putting too many critical VMs on the machine when you really need to keep them running. In my case I did run my internet firewall also on my ESXi machine but whenever I took the machine down to Maintenance mode then I lost internet connectivity. The family didn't like it. So I have a second ESXi machine running my firewall and a second FreeNAS as my backup for important data. Now I can take down my main ESXi machine and the internet remains running. If I need to take down my second ESXi machine and need internet access as well, I have a router preconfigured and all I need to do is move a few Ethernet cables and plug it in. I made this for when I'm on travel and the system takes a dive, I need to get the family back on the internet or they will all die.

Now I will try running VMs on FreeNAS, it's my duty to give it a try and see how they work. I will not be an expert because I'm certain I will not use them for normal use, but I should be able to operate them and provide some advice periodically.

Yesterday I received the new Asus z10 motherboard, cpu, and heatsink. Just the ram is missing but I hope it will arrive today so I am able to build my new NAS. I cross all my fingers that the board will work on freebsd.

Because of plex: running plex in a jail will be no option for me, because of the unsupported premium music feature from freebsd. Actually I run my plexserver on my Windows 10. Before I have run plex in a centos7 vm as Dockers but I have randomly crashes while playback and can't solve this. I really tryed everything. Whit a plex cash it is like your cutting internet connection.... the whole family goes cracy [emoji15].

What do you think will be the best alternative to a jail for run plex?

 

[joeschmuck]

What do you think will be the best alternative to a jail for run plex?

I run Plex manually installed into a jail, not the plugin version. I've never had a crash. This is the best way for me but I only use it to stream video content.

Other options are: 1) In FreeNAS you can setup a VM for some Linux OS, maybe Ubuntu (I like Ubuntu), however you might wait until FreeNAS 11-Release comes out. 2) If you run ESXi then definately a VM for Ubuntu or your favorite Linux OS.

 

[ArgaWoW]

I run Plex manually installed into a jail, not the plugin version. I've never had a crash. This is the best way for me but I only use it to stream video content.

Other options are: 1) In FreeNAS you can setup a VM for some Linux OS, maybe Ubuntu (I like Ubuntu), however you might wait until FreeNAS 11-Release comes out. 2) If you run ESXi then definately a VM for Ubuntu or your favorite Linux OS.

I will read your tread "my dream System" and setup ESXi. This will he the best way I guess.

 

[joeschmuck]

Definately do the reading of that thread. I hope there is enough information there to help others out who are seriously considering ESXi.

 

[akc1]

I will read your tread "my dream System" and setup ESXi. This will he the best way I guess.

There is also a very good guide that i used here: https://b3n.org/freenas-9-3-on-vmware-esxi-6-0-guide/

Alex

 

[ArgaWoW]

Ok, its like i have been scared about.... i have the same problem with bootloop like in this treat:

https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&sour...6UI0mswgy0pLBZsCw&sig2=copykT5JP6bcsVSQvrCAcQ

Freenas 9.3 works, but if i try to update to a newer version e.g. 9.10 or 11 i got a reboot (I guess while the keyboard detection)

Please give me some advice to solve :/

Thanks a lot

 

[joeschmuck]

So there was a bug report filed and it's of no help. My advice is to try and install FreeBSD 11 on your system. If it works then you can file a new bug report and state that FreeBSD 11 installs and runs fine and that the issue must be the FreeNAS bootloader. They will hopefully ask you to do some troubleshooting for them and provide some details.

In the BIOS is CSM enabled? Are you installing this as UEFI or BIOS or you tried both?

So once you do that, I'd try to install ESXi 6.5 and see if that works, and use the BIOS not UEFI. If you can get ESXi running, next setup a simple virtual machine with 8GB RAM, one 8GB hard drive and one 10GB hard drive. The 8GB hard drive will be your boot device for the VM. Point your virtual CD-ROM drive to the FreeNAS ISO and power that thing up. Maybe you could get it to run this way until FreeNAS 11 is fixed.

BTW, did you run the RAM and CPU burn-in tests and make sure your BIOS is up to date?

Other things to try after the other stuff, if you have dual CPUs, remove the second one and the RAM associated with it and place the RAM in the first CPU slots. See if this helps any. If I have the motherboard at my house then I'd see what I could figure out.

I'll tell you what, I'm sorry for misleading you down this path. I had no idea this motherboard was an issue. How would have thought of it, well @BigDave did.

@Ericloewe Could you update the Recommended hardware guide to forbid use of the Asus Z10 motherboard? I think this would be a smart move as this is the first board I've heard of which fails to boot properly.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'll take a look at it.

 

[SweetAndLow]

So there was a bug report filed and it's of no help. My advice is to try and install FreeBSD 11 on your system. If it works then you can file a new bug report and state that FreeBSD 11 installs and runs fine and that the issue must be the FreeNAS bootloader. They will hopefully ask you to do some troubleshooting for them and provide some details.

In the BIOS is CSM enabled? Are you installing this as UEFI or BIOS or you tried both?

So once you do that, I'd try to install ESXi 6.5 and see if that works, and use the BIOS not UEFI. If you can get ESXi running, next setup a simple virtual machine with 8GB RAM, one 8GB hard drive and one 10GB hard drive. The 8GB hard drive will be your boot device for the VM. Point your virtual CD-ROM drive to the FreeNAS ISO and power that thing up. Maybe you could get it to run this way until FreeNAS 11 is fixed.

BTW, did you run the RAM and CPU burn-in tests and make sure your BIOS is up to date?

Other things to try after the other stuff, if you have dual CPUs, remove the second one and the RAM associated with it and place the RAM in the first CPU slots. See if this helps any. If I have the motherboard at my house then I'd see what I could figure out.

I'll tell you what, I'm sorry for misleading you down this path. I had no idea this motherboard was an issue. How would have thought of it, well @BigDave did.

@Ericloewe Could you update the Recommended hardware guide to forbid use of the Asus Z10 motherboard? I think this would be a smart move as this is the first board I've heard of which fails to boot properly.

I don't think we should include non working hardware in the guide. That list would just be crazy.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[farmerpling2]

Some will disagree...

I would reduce the power supply from 1000 watt Bronze to 650-750 watt GOLD with longer warranty period.

The general thought would be the Gold will have better parts and less chance of failure because of higher quality.

Regarding disk drives - take a look at the spreadsheet and look at prices per TB along with warranty period.

The power usage and cost for electricity, between the various drives, is not that much different. For that size drive that are within dimes of each other per year.

Best of luck!