FreeNAS reboots?

[Darren Myers]

Does FreeNAS ever need to be rebooted on a weekly/monthly basis? Is it acceptable to let it run for weeks/months without reboot or update?

I've only rebooted it a handful of times for either updates or for network changes.

 

[pirateghost]

Just this last December I did my yearly maintenance on my servers and had an uptime of 375 days on all 3 of my FreeNAS boxes. Finally upgraded them. LOL. you dont need to reboot except to update if you want, or need to fix a bug.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yeah, updates are bad for uptime... https://xkcd.com/705/ :D

 

[Darren Myers]

Yeah, updates are bad for uptime... https://xkcd.com/705/ :D

Lol i love it!

 

[cyberjock]

Not to bludgeon you with "you fscking noob" rhetoric, (that's not my intent) but...

This isn't Windows. Crappy OSes require regular reboots. OSes that are designed "for men" don't need reboots regularly.

If you want to be a girly man, feel free to reboot regularly. ;)

 

[Darren Myers]

You can bludgeon and beat me over the head much as you please, my intent was to run it for as long as possible and as few reboots and little down time as possible. My crappy windows servers are exactly what they are,crappy and needing to be rebooted so often :P

 

[danb35]

There's no need for regular reboots, but many of the updates include security and stability fixes, and require a reboot to install. It looks like one of the latest 9.3 updates includes logic that can avoid reboots on updates, which would be good--we'll have to see how that goes.

 

[LearnLearnLearn]

I did my first update yesterday and to my surprise watched the box reboot itself which wasn't good for the 2 dozen esx vms attached to iSCSI.
Anyone know where that option is to NOT reboot? I don't really understand why it would need to reboot anyhow, just restart services of what ever to put the new version into affect. A reboot on a 24/7 storage server is a bad idea.

 

[Darren Myers]

My server is a 24/7 production box as well, I do a update every 2 to 3 weeks and I just scheduled downtime for middle of the night

 

[LearnLearnLearn]

I'm looking to use FN to replace a bunch of fibre channel storage but I can't have any down time. If there is no way around that, or some way to put the vms in some suspended mode during the reboot, that will be an issue preventing FN from being a solution.

I know there is a Suspend function on esx but I've never used it. It that could prevent having to halt and restart every vm, then that could be worked out.

 

[pirateghost]

I'm looking to use FN to replace a bunch of fibre channel storage but I can't have any down time. If there is no way around that, or some way to put the vms in some suspended mode during the reboot, that will be an issue preventing FN from being a solution.

I know there is a Suspend function on esx but I've never used it. It that could prevent having to halt and restart every vm, then that could be worked out.

So don't run your updates when you can't afford a reboot.

This is just logic, man.

Why are you updating? Is there something that fixes a bug you are having or are you just updating to update?

 

[LearnLearnLearn]

That isn't the point of my jumping into this thread. Obviously, don't run updates if you don't need them, yes, logical but also yes, sometimes, you might need the update so have to run it. I did it the other day because I'm checking out FN, trying everything on it so I can become familiar with it.

Now I'm wanting a little more understanding about updating and how to deal with rebooting which is weird because I have Linux boxes I've not rebooted in I don't even know how many years anymore.

 

[pirateghost]

That isn't the point of my jumping into this thread. Obviously, don't run updates if you don't need them, yes, logical but also yes, sometimes, you might need the update so have to run it. I did it the other day because I'm checking out FN, trying everything on it so I can become familiar with it.

Now I'm wanting a little more understanding about updating and how to deal with rebooting which is weird because I have Linux boxes I've not rebooted in I don't even know how many years anymore.

Have a look at the boot system.

Every boot entry is essentially a self contained image of the os install. When you run the updates, it isn't updating the running environment, but creating a new image to boot from...it isn't comparable to a Linux or BSD install. FreeNAS is an appliance. Treat it like such.

 

[Ericloewe]

If you can't have downtime, you can't update. No way around that at the moment...


...unless you pay iXSystems for TrueNAS and High Availability.

 

[LearnLearnLearn]

As I said, I was just surprised to see the server reboot after updating it. I've run MANY appliances over the years and don't recall even one that ever neededsrebooting.
It's no big deal, I'm still loving FN so far, just have to keep digging in.

I've built a non critical vmware/FN environment to learn about it by using it, asking questions in the forums, reading posts, etc etc.
I'll build a second server soon to mess with plugins and other cool things where if things go wrong, it won't take down vms.

 

[pirateghost]

As I said, I was just surprised to see the server reboot after updating it. I've run MANY appliances over the years and don't recall even one that ever neededsrebooting.

That's weird because every appliance I have ever used requires a reboot for firmware updates....

 

[LearnLearnLearn]

Software reboot sometimes but hardware, very rare. Depends on the quality of the machine you're using too. But anyhow, I know you from another post, you like to argue so :)

 

[pirateghost]

Software reboot sometimes but hardware, very rare. Depends on the quality of the machine you're using too. But anyhow, I know you from another post, you like to argue so :)

Yeah. Cisco switches and routers must really be terrible devices...

Whatever man. All firmware updates require a reboot on the hardware you are updating the firmware.

 

[LearnLearnLearn]

lol

 

[Darren Myers]

Well if downtime cant be done then i guess a TrueNAS system with HA would be needed, or you MIGHT be able to use vMotion if you had 2 FreeNAS servers. I have never done it, but VMwares article on vMotion seems that it would be possible. https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/features/storage-vmotion