Never again...

[BigDave]

Over the last couple of days I have been involved with an Off Topic discussion regarding power
consumption/hardware upgrades. As I'm always looking to learn, I put to use a new Kill-a-Watt
meter and began gathering data about the effects of hardware and settings and their effect on
my monthly electric bill.
I switched my 6 hard disks connections from an M1015 HBA to directly connected to my Mobo.
This of course eliminated the wattage that was being used to power that HBA card and lowered
the overall power draw. (I was of course interested in *how much*)
Before I began making these changes, my original configuration had six SATA ports on the
board open and unused, so I placed a 16GB SATA DOM in one of those SATA ports
and used it as the boot device.
It has worked perfectly without error of any kind (since version 9.2.1.5)
and never had an issue through dozens of updates to the most present stable 9.3
This morning, it was time for a chassis cleaning. After finishing that chore, I placed the tower
back on it's rack and hooked up all the cords and cables.
Upon reboot, the GUI was showing a red flashing alert in the top right corner and upon clicking
on the icon I got that frckin pop-up window with:

Alert System
CRITICAL: The boot volume state is ONLINE: One or more devices has experienced
an error resulting in data corruption. Applications may be affected.
( and yes, I got the email too:p)

I'll grant you the USB thumb drive in question was not brand new, but is of good quality
and has never had issues over it's service to me before today.

After this experience, from this day forward, I will never again use a USB device
to store my FreeNAS boot files. Never again!

This RANT is now over, as you were! :D

*edited for spelling

 

[Arwen]

From reading the FreeNAS forums for about 1 year, I determed that I wanted a SATA DOM for my boot device, not
USB. Plus, if possible, I wanted a free SATA port so I could mirror the boot device later.

6 months ago I bought a FreeNAS Mini, (diskless), which met my qualifications, (and needs). And recently, I
mirrored it's 16GB SATA DOM to a new 32GB SATA DOM, (larger size was needed, since it was a different
brand). All seems well, and my goal of "designed for reliability" is met, (except for the UPS, which is in progress).

Too many people have had trouble with USB boot devices. Of course, that might be because a majority of people
use USB boot devices... Just glad I had a choice.

 

[DrKK]

I'll say it again.

These USB thumb drives, most of them, aren't any good. They make errors FAR MORE FREQUENTLY than 99% of consumers even remotely understand. Thanks to ZFS, we can handle those errors (if we have mirrored pairs).

But: I have found that the Sandisk Cruzer Fit 2.0, which I've deployed over a dozen of, has never once crapped out on me, and runs like a champ in all of the systems I've built. Almost any other thumb drive I've tried has had very high failure rates, with a 100% failure rate even for the Kingston DT Micro.

 

[Darren Myers]

Cheap 80Gb SSD's here :P lol

 

[fta]

From reading the FreeNAS forums for about 1 year, I determed that I wanted a SATA DOM for my boot device, not
USB. Plus, if possible, I wanted a free SATA port so I could mirror the boot device later.

6 months ago I bought a FreeNAS Mini, (diskless), which met my qualifications, (and needs). And recently, I
mirrored it's 16GB SATA DOM to a new 32GB SATA DOM, (larger size was needed, since it was a different
brand). All seems well, and my goal of "designed for reliability" is met, (except for the UPS, which is in progress).

Too many people have had trouble with USB boot devices. Of course, that might be because a majority of people
use USB boot devices... Just glad I had a choice.

I'm looking to do the same thing. I see the existing DOM is hardwired into the main power connector. How did you power the second DOM?

 

[Arwen]

I'm looking to do the same thing. I see the existing DOM is hardwired into the main power connector. How did you power the second DOM?

Here is what I bought;

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NGBXVXS/?tag=ozlp-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OU422IU/?tag=ozlp-20

 

[fta]

Here is what I bought;

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NGBXVXS/?tag=ozlp-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OU422IU/?tag=ozlp-20

Perfect. Thanks. I'm looking at the 16GB version of the same module.

 

[Arwen]

Perfect. Thanks. I'm looking at the 16GB version of the same module.

As long as you don't have to mirror an existing 16GB SSD, you should be good. (Or are willing to do a re-load to
the smaller one.)

My existing 16GB is just slightly larger than half of my new 32GB. So if the SuperMicro 16GB is exactly half of
my 32GB one, then it would not have been a simple mirror...

 

[fta]

16GB version worked a treat. I'm now running a mirrored boot device. Thanks much.

 

[katit]

I switched my 6 hard disks connections from an M1015 HBA to directly connected to my Mobo.
This of course eliminated the wattage that was being used to power that HBA card and lowered
the overall power draw. (I was of course interested in *how much*)

BigDave,

Do you have results published somewhere? I'm also wondering how much difference does it make..

 

[BigDave]

BigDave,

Do you have results published somewhere? I'm also wondering how much difference does it make..

My savings are documented here in this thread.
For my wants and needs, the cost savings are low enough to be ignored, when performance considerations
are included. Keep in mind that my cost per killawat hour is 11.2 cents (US dollars) at todays rates from
my electrical provider.

edited for linked post

 

[katit]

Thanks! Yes, I see it. Not much. Reason I asked is because I'm starting a new build and I do have SAS2 backplane. Was wondering how much it will cost me because I won't have 24 drives.. But. I don't want to have all this wire mess either. So, I guess I will go with back plane. Our electricity is 11c in summer (8 month) and 8.5c in winter. Little cheaper, but it's all about future, right :)