Boot options with no SATA ports

[tim.bishop]

Hi all,

I'm mulling over a new FreeNAS build and I'm fairly happy with most of the options. The board I'm looking at (Supermicro X11SSM-F) has 8 SATA ports and I intend to use 8 WD red drives, so that doesn't leave any remaining ports for a boot device.

Booting off USB is certainly an option - not ideal, but it'll work. I also have an SSD that I can use too if I could connect it.

So I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions? I guess a PCI-e device is an obvious choice, either a SATA controller to connect the SSD to, or maybe an M.2 card with a cheap drive on it.

Another alternative is the X11SSH-F with its M.2 connector, but it appears more limited and I expect a PCI-e card would be better albeit less compact.

Any other options I haven't thought of?

 

[sfcredfox]

Booting off USB is certainly an option - not ideal, but it'll work

I've been using mirrored USB drives for many years and it works fine, I don't see anything from the standpoint of a trade off that would make me want to trade a SATA port (if they're limited) for the boot device. You just need to use quality USB devices.

 

[sfcredfox]

NOTE: If you choose to use USB, read the part of the manual that talks about the system data set. You probably want to select a pool to store that data so you aren't writing unnecessarily to your USB devices and burn them out sooner than they should.

 

[tim.bishop]

NOTE: If you choose to use USB, read the part of the manual that talks about the system data set. You probably want to select a pool to store that data so you aren't writing unnecessarily to your USB devices and burn them out sooner than they should.

Thanks - that's a useful tip. For anyone reading this in the future here's a link to that section of the manual:

http://doc.freenas.org/11/system.html#system-dataset

 

[DJCounter]

Tim, a little off-topic but since I am looking to build a system using the same motherboard, I was wondering what RAM you intend using?

 

[tim.bishop]

Tim, a little off-topic but since I am looking to build a system using the same motherboard, I was wondering what RAM you intend using?

Good question. I've looked at the Supermicro List but I'm having a hard time finding the RAM listed. So I'm thinking I'll just get some from Crucial instead - they claim it's supported, so I'd hope they'll be reasonable about returns if it doesn't work. I've always used Crucial in the past and never had any issues.

 

[DJCounter]

Good call - I was considering exactly the same, and using the same logic. Good luck with the build.

 

[Inxsible]

USB is not so bad if you make sure of a few things to do. I have been using the same 8Gb SanDisk Cruzer USB key since more than 3.5 years.

If there's a lack of SATA ports, I would use an USB key