It's been almost 2 years since I built my FreeNAS box. I only really use the NAS for file storage. So no Plex, no minecraft server or any of that. It's basically a big external HDD for multiple machines.
So far I've had no major issues, but for the last 18 months or so I've been getting warnings that my HBA card (an LSI 9211-8i) is running firmware version 16 and FreeNAS wants me to run version 20. When I just built the NAS I had to downgrade the card from 19 to 16 because FreeNAS only supported version 16 at that time. That downgrade was an absolute nightmare, so of course I've been putting off the upgrade for ages. Apparently running the wrong firmware version can cause your data to completely disappear, so I decided to play it safe and not update anymore until I had the time to do everything right. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?
Now then ...
I've finally set aside a couple of days to flash the card, upgrade to a version of FreeNAS that is actually supported, add some storage (upgrading the SSD storage from 2x 256GB mirrored to 4x 256GB in RAIDZ1) and reconfigure everything so that only certain accounts get write access. 2 questions though
Question # 1 : which version of FreeNAS do I need? The FreeNAS site still talks about 9.10, but my NAS' control panel gives options for Corral and FreeNAS 11, both in stable and nightly versions. Nightlies are out of the question as I don't want to mess with it every couple of days, but what branch should I switch to?
Question # 2 : should I upgrade from 9.3 or should I just create a new installer? I've heard that it can take ages sometimes. Time is not the issue, I'm more worried about leftover junk from the old version and the mess that I made of the user accounts.
All the data is backed up, the important data even several times on different media. I will probably wipe all the storage and reconfigure the pools etc while I'm at it.
Once the NAS is set up properly, I'll also be switching the main PC over to Linux (it's the last one here still running Windows as main OS) and I'd like to have the NAS' shares mount automatically on that one. But I'll figure that out or ask about that when I get there. For now the NAS is my big worry.
Freenas 11 is the one they are actively moving forward I believe. 9.10 is there stable branch. I would export zfs pools and install fresh since so much crazy has gone down over past year. Freenas 11 is going to have docker and better VM support over 9.10.
Wouldn't hurt to try and upgrade (so long as everything is backed up), but there have been dramatic changes, so I'd be inclined to do a fresh install, especially seeing as how you've already set aside a couple of days. It would probably be quicker in the long run anyway, than trying to track down some strange, or broken behavior from a semi-successful upgrade.
hmm ... apparently the proper FreeNAS 11.0 release was scheduled for the end of May but got pushed back a little. It'd be stupid to install 9.10 now and upgrade from there, I might as well wait a couple of days or weeks. After all I've been on an outdated branch for well over a year already.
In the meantime I can already put the new SSDs in and flash the card, at least that way it'll be on the right firmware already. I highly doubt that FreeNAS 11.0 will want my card to have older firmware than what 9.3 already supports.
A portion of Episode 190 of the BSDNow podcast from about a month ago had Kris Moore the Director Engineering from iXsystems who told the story of the deprecation of Corral and the future plans for FreeNAS. Bottom line on Question #1 from your use case is to use the 9.10 STABLE release until 11 is baked in a little - it is a storage appliance for you. Containers are supposed to be re-introduced in 11.1 which is the reason to consider Corral now. If you go look at the FreeNAS BUG/Feature site FreeNAS 11 should be out very soon.
2 - I prefer fresh installs. I have so much trouble getting users and permissions to work on a couple of the plug-ins - I'm never confident just my regular storage is correctly secured. If you have a lot of data and depending on where it is stored copying data from a backup can be extremely time consuming. The reason I moved to NAS4Free and FreeNAS was the portability of ZFS pools. I had no idea of the benefits of a Copy on Write file system at the time.
Look up how to properly wipe discs I've had problems reusing discs from other ZFS pools it seems FreeNAS wants to import. I don't remember but I think you use GPART to destroy or before you shutdown FreeNAS for the last time.
Tnx for backing up that info. I just went by what I read on other forums. So you're suggesting to wait a little before moving over to FreeNAS 11? Makes sense, I prefer it when things just work without having to update them every 2 days because of bugfixes.
I've spent the last hour or so flashing the card to FW version 20. Couldn't erase the ROM in Windows, DOS didn't work either. Eventually I did it in EFI. Well, at least it's not giving any warning signs anymore.
Also I found a spot to mount 4 more drives. All 8 of the Define R5s drive cages are filled with WD Reds and the two 2.5" slots at the back already had a pair of Crucial MX200s in them. So I ended up mounting the 850PROs in the top grille. Complete overkill on a Gigabit network, of course. Then again I do notice a difference in response time between my HDD array and my SSDs and I can't stand waiting for files to open. First world problems and all that.
The modu-vents are back on there now, so you'll never notice.
The initial plan was to replace the Crucials with the Samsungs, but then I thought to myself "why not just put them all in?" 33.5TB of raw space, yay ! (sadly only around 21TB after parity and ZFS overhead)
As for deleting the drives, I have a 2.5" + 3.5" hotswap bay in my secondary rig so I can shut the NAS down, format the drives in NTFS one at a time and start fresh with a new Freenas install and drives that are unaware of any previous ZFS configuration. But I'll probably find a way using FreeNAS' control panel.
Just to make sure there is no ZFS-related data on them anymore. That way FreeNAS can't piece the puzzle back together. Apparently it's really good at that, so I'm not taking any chances. Any format will do really, I only mentioned ZFS because I happen to have that PC running on Windows right now.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought drives formatted for zfs had a partition table at the beginning and at the end of the drive, but ntfs only has one at the beginning. If so, would formatting to ntfs remove the second/ backup table, or might it still be picked up/ interfere when reformatting back to zfs?
Perhaps completely zeroing out would be the better idea. The new FreeNAS stick is ready, so I could just try it and see what happens. Worst-case scenario I'll run DBAN on all HDDs, use FreeNAS' "wipe" on the SSDs and make yet another FreeNAS stick to make sure that absolutely nothing gets carried over.
EDIT : Well, apparently just deleting the datasets and detaching the volumes did the trick. Looks like there was no need to do anything fancy, the new FreeNAS install was not aware of any previous ZFS arrangements.
Unless your NAS is not super critical, I would only trust my data to a stable release. And from their website, the only stable release at this point is 9.10.
I know I’m necroing this thread but that is the point. It has been a while, FreeNAS 11 is out since mid June. How is it doing? Is it a viable option today? Or should I look somewhere else?
No idea TBH. Back when this topic was active people told me to install 9.10 while waiting for 11 to mature a bit. I did just that and am now still on 9.10 because the NAS just does what it’s supposed to do. I haven’t even looked into upgrading to 11 yet.
As long as it still works and isn’t a huge security risk, I’ll probably stick with 9.10 for a little while longer.
I upgraded to it when it become the new stable release and so far I haven’t had any issues with it. I didn’t upgrade my ZFS pools yet, so I still have the option to go back, but I didn’t need to so far.
Given that the FreeNAS website only offers version 11 for download, I don’t think that they want you to install the older version anymore, so I would go for version 11. Just don’t expect the VM feature to be any more useful than a paper weight. Don’t get me wrong, it does work but it’s so limited and buggy, I wouldn’t use it for anything outside of fooling around with it.
I haven’t had any issues with my FNAS 11 stable VM. I run my install on my ESXI server with a passed through Lsi 9211-8i and a trio of 1TB of WD Reds. Personally, I haven’t seen any stability difference between 11 stable and 9.10 stable.
