New MB - What if drives are out of order?

[1.21gigawatts]

I am replacing the motherboard in an existing FreeNAS 9.10 server. The old motherboard is a Supermicro A1SRI-2758F-O Atom, the new is a Supermicro X10SLL+-F-O. There is a six-drive RAIDZ2 connected to the MB SATA ports. Additionally, there is a Vantec 2-port SATA controller in both the new and old machines that connects two 128GB SSDs which are the boot drives (I've had too many failures of thumb drives to ever trust them again).

I think I understand that FreeNAS and ZFS are supposed to identify drives by a UID that is embedded when the drive is ZFS formatted, but is that absolutely true? I'm a little bit worried about what will happen if the drives are recognized in the wrong order.

Is there anything I need to do to prevent a problem with this?

Thanks
(BTW, I will try the Windows in VirtualBox jail issue with this system. If it works, at least I'll have a path to plan with)

 

[gpsguy]

Don't fret about it. FreeNAS identifies the disks using the gptid, so it doesn't matter.


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[jgreco]

UID that is embedded when the drive is ZFS formatted, but is that absolutely true?

It is absolutely true as long as you created the pool using FreeNAS.

 

[Ericloewe]

Hell, even Intel FakeRaid doesn't care at all which drive is on which port. It even miraculously works across systems.

Why should FreeNAS/ZFS be any worse?

 

[joeschmuck]

Additionally, there is a Vantec 2-port SATA controller in both the new and old machines that connects two 128GB SSDs which are the boot drives (I've had too many failures of thumb drives to ever trust them again).

You could drop down to a single SSD as they are much more reliable than USB Flash drives, but that is up to you.

 

[1.21gigawatts]

Thanks all. The system is migrated. I have no idea (nor do I really care at this point) whether the drives enumerated the same or not, it just worked. As for dropping to a single SSD, I have to add a controller card to do one, and it has two ports. The SSDs cost about forty bucks apiece, so the redundancy seems like a good idea.

What does everyone else use for a boot device? the FreeNAS installer actually put out some kind of warning that I'd be better off installing on a USB device than a hard drive. Been there, done that, suffered the consequences (not much, other than reinstalling), aint doing it again.

 

[cyberjock]

I use a SATADOM in one and an SSD in the other. The USB message is because FreeNAS really is for home users and other situations that aren't "critical infrastructure". If you are looking for critical infrastructure you should be looking at buying TrueNAS and, hopefully, a support contract so when something breaks you aren't stuck asking in the forums for help. ;)

 

[1.21gigawatts]

Well, yeah, and I might start doing that. But in the real world, I have very good backups and could, in the worst of circumstances, just restore to a new machine. But I certainly do support the idea of commercial products for commercial installations. I used to pay IBM and before that, Net Integration Services for their server. That is, before IBM ran it into the ground.

BTW, what does the TrueNAS machine use as a boot device?

 

[cyberjock]

BTW, what does the TrueNAS machine use as a boot device?

Mirrored SATA DOMs. :)

 

[1.21gigawatts]

Mirrored SATA DOMs. :)

And there ya go. :D

 

[cyberjock]

There's a reason why I recommend them. ;)