Newbie Storage Question, trying to plan ahead

[HoneyBadger]

I'm still playing with it, but it seems like no matter what I do, I can't get Freenas to install on any drive on the Dell T620 onboard SATA (in AHCI mode).

Anyone see anything like this?

I'm betting there some kind of FakeRAID in play like the Dell "S110" or similar. Check your BIOS, I believe under "SATA settings" -> "Embedded SATA" and make sure they're set to "AHCI" and not "RAID" - also check "Integrated Devices" for an "Integrated RAID Controller" and disable it.

Odd, but it seemed to let me install onto a USB flash drive just fine.

I've seen some people say to do that, some say no. Is there any reason not to run it that way?

Lots of people run home/smaller systems from USB, it's fully supported. Reasons not to do it would be that a small SATA drive or SSD are more durable and reliable (as well as significantly faster to update!)

 

[shaunvis]

Thanks for the info.

I think you're right on the RAID thing. I managed to get it installed on an HD, then it wouldn't boot. When I tried installing again on the same disk, it lists the disk twice. Once as ada0 and once as RAID0 (something like that).

I've got a rack mount SuperMicro box I'm going to try next. I just didn't want to use that one because it sounds like a jet engine, lol.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks for the info.

I think you're right on the RAID thing. I managed to get it installed on an HD, then it wouldn't boot. When I tried installing again on the same disk, it lists the disk twice. Once as ada0 and once as RAID0 (something like that).

Definitely sounds like it's got the "PERC S110" or similar set up in the BIOS. Go hunting for that and shut off anything referring to RAID before you fire up the SuperMicro turbine, especially if this is a home build. :)

 

[shaunvis]

Dear lord, what a PITA!

I tried everything, updated BIOS & LCC. I thought you were right about the S110 thing, but there's no way to enable AHCI as well as disable RAID. Options are just chose one or the other. I tried an add-on SATA card too, nothing worked.

In the end, I figured out why it would let me install to a drive in one of the bays connected to the H310, but not boot from it. The BIOS will only boot from slot 0 on there.

So after moving the drive I installed to into slot 0 of the H310, I moved that 2TB drive to the mob SATA #2 port. And FINALLY, got this thing up and running. Just needed to find the right combo of where to put things I guess. Totally annoying, but it's up and running, lol.

I'm definitely playing with this for a while before moving over my data and making this my new server, but I think I'm on the right track (finally).

Thanks for the help everyone!

 

[Scharbag]

Good work.

I would install FreeNAS on a USB drive as that will be just fine. I personally run my ESXi server from a USB drive with no problems. If you want, you can use 2 USB drives for fault tolerance. Yes they are slower that SSDs but once FreeNAS is running, there is very little loading on the boot volume.

Your plan to use all 8 drive bays is sound. ZFS does not allow for pools to be rearranged with ease. Once you pick a layout, you are stuck with it unless you have adequate space and time to move data around. Something I have faced in the past... Plan well now!

If I were you, I would run an 8 drive vDev in RaidZ2 configuration. This offers decent fault tolerance and will be speedy enough for typical home use.

Just never forget: While ZFS does increase the availability of your data, it does not replace the need for a backup strategy. If you have data you CANNOT lose, then you need to have backups.

Cheers,