Booting from USB3 memory on a HP Microserver Gen8

[Jasse Jansson]

Has anybody managed to boot a gen8 microserver from USB3 memory sticks ???
I'm booting from dual mirrored USB2 sticks for the moment.
That makes room for 5 HD's for storage.
but one of these mem-sticks got faulty last week and I replaced it with another I found in my "collection of stuff".
This worked fine but I got the fancy idea that I should buy new mem-sticks in case of more failures.
So I bought a pair of Kingston sticks in slim metal cases that easily fits side by side, just a newer version of the old ones to be replaced, but the new sticks were of the USB3 variant.
With one USB3 and one USB2 stick the gen8 refuses to boot.
Is this a known problem with the gen8 ???

 

[kdragon75]

Can you provide any error messages? What indication are you getting that its not working?

 

[Jasse Jansson]

Okay, did this one more time to get the exact error message.

The ILO boots just fine, but when it's time to hand the machine over to FreeNAS_11 the gen8 gets stuck with these two lines:

"Attempting Boot From USB DriveKey (C:)"
"Missing operating system"

and nothing more happens.

I just switched back to a USB2 stick and the gen8 booted FreeNAS happily.
Currently reconnecting da0 from the web interface as I write this, works just fine.
The way I see it, the gen8 don't like USB3 mem-sticks in the USB2 ports.

 

[sfcredfox]

The way I see it, the gen8 don't like USB3 mem-sticks in the USB2 ports.

That's weird.
Did you try the USB3 by itself or matching the USB3s? (Maybe Firmware or FreeBSD doesn't like the mismatch? )

 

[Jasse Jansson]

No I did not try 2 USB3 mem-sticks at the same time.
A bit hard booting on them as non of these have FreeNAS on them.
Has anyone booted from 2 USB3 sticks on a gen8 ???

I have one external USB2 enclosure for a 2,5" HD, might be better to buy a small SSD and use that one.
Well I loose redundancy but I know USB-sticks are not the most reliable media.

 

[Inxsible]

"Attempting Boot From USB DriveKey (C:)"
"Missing operating system"

A bit hard booting on them as non of these have FreeNAS on them.

That would seem obvious, wouldn't it?

If these USB 3 devices do not have FreeNAS installed, the bootup process is going to give you exactly the error that you are getting.

 

[Jasse Jansson]

Yeah, I know that.
But I got that message with one USB2 stick with FreeNAS on it ( broken mirror ) together with one new unused USB3 stick.
I detached the faulty one before messing with it.
The OS *is* there while attempting to replace a failing memstick.
I have ordered a bunch of USB2 sticks, while they're still available, so I have spares for many years to come.