2nd Sata DOM or move to 2 x 2.5" SSD?

[rmccullough]

Supermicro 2U (CSE-826A-R1200LPB) 12x 3.5" Drive Bays
Motherboard: Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F+

I have a single 32gb SuperMicro SATADOM as my boot drive. I would like to add boot drive redundancy.

I did review the threads Boot device Supermicro SATADOM or SATA SSD 2.5 and SATADOM and FreeNAS.

I think this answers my question that I would like to go with a 2nd SATADOM as I don't have internal 2.5" bays (at least not that I am aware of). What I don't know for certain is if I have a 2nd power connector available next to one of the SATA ports on this motherboard. While I know I could answer this myself, I would rather not shut down my system, crawl into my crawl space, and open the case to look. Does someone happen to know off the top of their head if my board has a 2nd power connector?

If not, what other options am I look at? Since I don't have internal 2.5" bays and don't want to use my SAS backplane bays, am I stuck with USB storage?

Is it a fools errand to have the SATADOM be primary storage and a USB stick as my backup boot device?

 

[Lengstrom]

most of the Supermicro boards only have 1 yellow SATADOM port. otherwise you need the 5V adapter, witch not all boards support
general rule of thumb. X10 series motherboards and newer have both.

hope that helps.

 

[Redcoat]

SM Manual at https://www.supermicro.com/about/po...rl=/manuals/motherboard/C606_602/MNL-1258.pdf shows only one power connector for DOM

 

[Yorick]

USB backup drive does not seem like a great idea.

What are you solving for? A single satadom or single ssd boot drive will last longer than the mechanical drives. If it dies before you stop using the server - that’s not a given - you can install TrueNAS from scratch and restore a configuration backup.

 

[rienk.dejong]

If its just a home server, not a business production server. Two new 2.5" SSDs might be cheaper than an additional SATA-DOM.
And If you have some free space in the system you could use some double sided tape to mount them.
It's not the cleanest solution, but for a home server it might be acceptable.

 

[Bozon]

Does someone make a splitter cable for the SATA Dom power outlet? This seems like a useful thing. I can’t imagine that a SATA DOM uses enough power to overwhelm this power port.

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

I saw on eBay some non-Supermicro SATADOMs that seem to use a normal SATA or Molex or other power connectors. See:
https://ebay.us/xNTpYs
https://ebay.us/t5esBs

InnoDisk InnoLite SATADOM D150QV-L 64GB | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for InnoDisk InnoLite SATADOM D150QV-L 64GB at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

ebay.us

 

[Evertb1]

And If you have some free space in the system you could use some double sided tape to mount them.

I have done just that for my bootdrive in my backup server and to me it's a good solution. And not even bad looking (though I don't look much inside the case :) ).

 

[rmccullough]

I may investigate the double-sided tape option.

How much risk is there if I don't have a mirror boot drive? If the SATADOM fails, can I installed FreeNAS on a thumbdrive, boot to it, and load my config?

How often should I be backing up my config? I typically only do this when updating FreeNAS (e.g. 11.2-u7 to 11.2-u8).

 

[Yorick]

Back your config up daily. There are some good scripts available to do that. Someone who has a script repository chime in - I'll just drop these two in a temp repository. https://github.com/thorsteneb/FreeNAS-scripts/blob/master/README.md

Yes, you can just reinstall FreeNAS, restore config, and you'll be back up. Note these scripts don't back up secret key: If you are using encrypted pools you'll need that, as well.

 

[rmccullough]

I don't think I setup encrypted pools, so should be good. Where does this backup your config to? I would need to make sure it is accessible right?

 

[Yorick]

It backs it up into your dataset, you set the location inside the script.
You can then either:
- Sync it to the cloud, this is what I do
- Grab the config backup after zfs pool import when you need to reinstall

Either way works.

Do edit these scripts, they absolutely require the variables to be set right.

 

[Evertb1]

- Sync it to the cloud, this is what I do
- Grab the config backup after zfs pool import when you need to reinstall

Like @Yorick I sync my config backups to the cloud. I prefer it to save them outside my ZFS pool.
By the way: In the past I have lost a couple of single USB sticks I used as boot device, before I had enough of that and used an SSD. Reinstalling FreeNAS and loading the config file is realy, realy easy and fast.