What is the 2019 equivalent of the 2013 HP Proliant N40L Micro Tower?

[SoonerLater]

In 2013 I built my first (and so far, only) FreeNAS box using an HP Proliant N40L Micro Tower. I paid $335.99 (Amazon) for the box. I installed six 1-TB drives, 16 GB of RAM and put FreeNAS on a USB flash drive that plugs into an internal (on the motherboard) USB port. Four of the drives go in removable (cold-swap) drive bay caddies. Two more are installed internally through a bit of modding. I went with RAIDZ2, so I have ~4 TB of usable space. I try to keep it below 75% of available capacity. It's been a very reliable file server.

I had planned to replace the drives after three years, but obviously I didn't follow through. Now that everything is six years old I suspect that I should replace it with a new build before something breaks. I can continue to run the 2013 box on the side, but only for non-critical stuff.

So what is on the market which is sort of, kind of, like the N40L? I'm aware of the current HP Proliant Microserver Gen10 line, but I can't tell whether the old trick of putting six drives in the box still works. I definitely want to have room for six drives. In asking what is today's N40L, I don't mean to limit the answer to just HP hardware. Any PC that has roughly the same form factor is something I would consider. I don't have room for a full size or even mid-size tower.

 

[jenksdrummer]

Shuttle has a similarly sized box that you can install 4 3.5" HDDs in + 1NVMe. Not a hot-plug box, but one could get 3.5" => 2.5" double-trays and easily get the same or more space; though you'd need more SATA ports as the board comes with 4. NVMe could be good as a cache; but due to lack of redundancy not as a ZIL/SLOG.

Also, the FreeNAS Mini and MiniXL solution from IXSystems is available as a 4 or 8 bay barebones; with spots for a ZIL/SLOG and Cache in 2.5" format, I believe.

Finally, there are some mini-itx chassis out there that may fit the sizing profile; but might still not meet the disk profile.

 

[Wheeler]

The quick answer might be the FreeNAS Mini XL, but it's not the bargain the old Proliant was. https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/
An 8 bay unit with 32GB ECC memory and no disks is $1350 US. It does have a couple of fixed internal 2.5" bays for cache disks in addition to the front 3.5" toolless slots.

Edit to add a reply to jenksdrummer: the need for a mirrored SLOG is in general a thing of the past, especially for a small system. Many years ago a failed log device would possibly render a pool unuseable but that's not the case now. About the only data loss scenario with a single log now is if the device fails and the system crashes in the window before ZFS realizes it has failed and reverts to making those ZIL writes in the main pool. Sync write data is retained in memory until it's committed to the main pool. This has been explained by people like Matt Ahrens and Adam Leventhal, who as primary ZFS developers ought to understand better than the rest of us.

 

[SoonerLater]

The quick answer might be the FreeNAS Mini XL, but it's not the bargain the old Proliant was. https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/
An 8 bay unit with 32GB ECC memory and no disks is $1350 US. It does have a couple of fixed internal 2.5" bays for cache disks in addition to the front 3.5" toolless slots.

I have no doubt that every IX built system would be vastly superior to anything that I could ever build. And probably all the Mercedes are better than my 11 year old Honda. Sadly, I can't spend that sort of money unless I find somewhere else to live (sans spouse).

 

[Jailer]

If your system is still running fine and not lacking in the power you need just upgrade the drives. Ive got plenty of old hardware that ends up pitched because i dont have a use for it but is still otherwise functional.

 

[Chris Moore]

I don't have room for a full size or even mid-size tower.

That certainly limits your options. Is this installed in a car? Why do you need such a small sized device?

 

[SoonerLater]

If I swap the drive set (one drive at a time; power down, swap drive, power up, add new drive to array, wait for new drive to be flooded with data, lather, rinse, repeat, until all six drives are replaced, then resize the array), and then just run the existing computer until it dies, can I move the six disc set to another computer running FreeNas without losing data?

 

[SoonerLater]

That certainly limits your options. Is this installed in a car? Why do you need such a small sized device?

Hahahaha... no, not installed in a car. It sits on a shelf in a closet that has only so much space. Yes, I could choose to place it in a different place, but this closet is an ideal space (ventilated, close to the main network switch, easy to access...). The existing "toaster size" HP let's me have six drives in a Z2 pool in the space that I have in the closet. If reasonably possible, I'd prefer to stay with the same form factor. But things change. That might not be possible in 2019.

 

[anmnz]

If I swap the drive set (one drive at a time; power down, swap drive, power up, add new drive to array, wait for new drive to be flooded with data, lather, rinse, repeat, until all six drives are replaced, then resize the array), and then just run the existing computer until it dies, can I move the six disc set to another computer running FreeNas without losing data?

Yes.

 

[Chris Moore]

then just run the existing computer until it dies, can I move the six disc set to another computer running FreeNas without losing data?

Easy. You might even be able to reuse the boot drive. I have migrated to newer hardware twice with the same boot drive and storage pool.

 

[Chris Moore]

If reasonably possible, I'd prefer to stay with the same form factor. But things change. That might not be possible in 2019.

It might be possible next year. You never know what new model will be introduced in the next few months. The "toaster size" is still viable and there are other options out there, at a higher price. I would do the, "lather, rinse, repeat" for larger drives now and look into the computer again next year. Options are not very good right at the moment.

 

[jenksdrummer]

Edit to add a reply to jenksdrummer: the need for a mirrored SLOG is in general a thing of the past, especially for a small system. Many years ago a failed log device would possibly render a pool unuseable but that's not the case now. About the only data loss scenario with a single log now is if the device fails and the system crashes in the window before ZFS realizes it has failed and reverts to making those ZIL writes in the main pool. Sync write data is retained in memory until it's committed to the main pool. This has been explained by people like Matt Ahrens and Adam Leventhal, who as primary ZFS developers ought to understand better than the rest of us.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that - back to the FreeNAS family again after quite some time away in QNAP/Synology land. It's gotten a lot of improvement!

 

[Arwen]

Last year, this year and next year are a bit exciting in the computer world. AMD processor options with ECC are coming out, including some with 10Gbps Ethernet.

To be clear, many AMD processors are not recomended for FreeBSD / NAS, especially the older ones. But, the new Epyc & Ryzen processors look good for the future, including even the embedded versions of Epyc & Ryzen. Some of those embedded processors would make great, (and lower power), NASes. Or even pfSense firewalls, (can I say 8 x 10Gbps Ethernet!?).

On the other hand, this push by AMD is forcing Intel to bring up it's A Game, instead of incremental improvements.

So, while today simply replacing hard drives might be the best option, later this year and next year changing out the system board could have more choices.

 

[SoonerLater]

Easy. You might even be able to reuse the boot drive. I have migrated to newer hardware twice with the same boot drive and storage pool.

My current build is running FreeNAS-9.10.2-U6 (561f0d7a1). I suppose that it would be wise to update to FreeNAS 11.2 Stable. Would you recommend doing the OS update first, then swapping the drives and re-sizing the pool afterwards? Or vice versa?

 

[Chris Moore]

and re-sizing the pool afterwards?

The pool should auto-resize when all the drives have been replaced.

I suppose that it would be wise to update to FreeNAS 11.2 Stable.

If it was me, with older hardware, I would stop at 11.1-U7 instead of going all the way to 11.2-U4. One of the big changes between 11.1 and 11.2 is that they change from GRUB as the boot loader to the FreeBSD boot loader. Some of the older systems have had trouble with the new boot loader. That is more of a, "peace of mind," thing. It is entirely possible to go to the newer version but you might want to use a different boot media so you can easily switch back if there is any trouble.

There is an update to the ZFS pool that is available once you upgrade. You do not need to upgrade the pool unless you are completely certain that you will not need to go back to the previous version of FreeNAS.

 

[SoonerLater]

The pool should auto-resize when all the drives have been replaced.

WOW! That's incredible. With the RAID systems I had before I found FreeNAS, resizing the array was either a manual task or just impossible.

If it was me, with older hardware, I would stop at 11.1-U7 instead of going all the way to 11.2-U4. One of the big changes between 11.1 and 11.2 is that they change from GRUB as the boot loader to the FreeBSD boot loader. Some of the older systems have had trouble with the new boot loader. That is more of a, "peace of mind," thing. It is entirely possible to go to the newer version but you might want to use a different boot media so you can easily switch back if there is any trouble.

Stupid question: my boot media is a USB flash drive / thumb drive. Is it possible that I can shut down my FreeNAS box, pull the existing USB flash drive, duplicate it on a Windows 10 PC (so that I have a backup)? If I had a backup of the USB flash drive that works now, I guess that means I can attempt to upgrade to 11.2-U4 and if it doesn't work, I can just put the backup flash drive in the system and fall-back to what works? That sounds too good to be true.

 

[Chris Moore]

pull the existing USB flash drive, duplicate it on a Windows 10 PC

No. A windows PC will not recognize the file-system because your FreeNAS boot media is using ZFS and Windows doesn't do ZFS.
You can use FreeNAS to create and then split a mirror. Adding a mirror is done in the GUI, just look at the manual for that. It is pretty easy.
To split the pool, that is done from the command line. Here is a reference on how to do it:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gjooc/index.html
The boot pool should be named "freenas-boot".

 

[Jailer]

Or just save a copy of your config that you could upload to restore your system to it's previous state. Seems way easier to me.