2016 FreeNAS mini main board died. What to use as a replacement?

[lambert]

I bought my FreeNAS mini in September of 2016 via Amazon. I didn't get a around to putting it in service for a couple of years. Maybe that's why it lasted this long.

It died with a Kernel panic which indicated an issue with CPU 7. I didn't grab the panic info. When I power cycled, there was no video output and the USB keyboard won't light any LEDs. Ethernet is linking at 10M-F to the switch. I see the BMC has pulled an IP from the DHCP server but haven't tried to use IPMI on it.

What is a suggested motherboard to replace these things in the mini chassis? Hopefully somthing with more processing power but with thermal dissipation within the limits of the case. It might be a bonus if the old RAM worked on the new board....

 

[Constantin]

Can't help you with the old RAM but you could go a couple different directions:

1) Replace like for like - I believe "safe" motherboards were made after Feb 2017
2) Go with a D-1508 mini ITX - like the X10SDV-2C-TLN2F from supermicro to get onboard 10Gbit, 5 SATA and 1 SATADOM. Unlikely to take old RAM though.
3) Go with the current Mini Motherboard - Asrock C3338 - see here - but no 10Gbit and only 2 memory slots.

 

[JaimieV]

Given that message it might be the CPU rather than the motherboard, if you're lucky. Can you source a matching one to test?

 

[Constantin]

CPU is embedded so unless you have mad soldering skills, it suggests replacing the motherboard, not just the CPU.

 

[JaimieV]

Ar! Fair point, I didn't look that up.

 

[lambert]

I moved the DOM over to a Dell R710 server, just a little soldering to power it. I bought a DELL H310 PERC flashed to IT mode. Put everything together, transferred the drives to the Dell carriers and it booted up like nothing happened. I just had to reconfigure for the different network card.

I did have to modify the BIOS to use BIOS boot instead of EFI to match the DOM.

It went from 8 core atom to 12 core xeon (plus 12 HTT cores), and from 16 GB RAM to 128 GB. It just rocks on.... I love ZFS.