Just thought I would share a feel good story for you noobs who are still not entirely certain if freeNAS is for you. I still consider myself a noob.
I set up a nice 6 x 3.0TB freeNAS array, using an old Gigabybyte GA-X58A-UD3R and an i7-920. The system flew, and I was very very happy. Coppied all my data over and used it as the heart of storage for a bunch of computers in our organization.
Then, disaster strikes... the motherboard starts having issues and goes into a never ending boot loop... after PS replacements, memory replacement, nothing seems to get her back up. I came to the conclusion that the motherboard has seen its last days. So the decision I faced was: Do I buy another 1366 socket motherboard, most likely manufactured around the same time my old board, or do I jump to something else? Socket 1366 boards are not cheap, and finding a good x58a chipset board is no picnic, seems many manufacturers had all sorts of issues with them.
So, I decide to dump the old MB/CPU combo, and get something NEW and more reliable. I settle on the new Asus F2A85-M/CSM + AMD A6-640K CPU. I sheepishly take it home wondering if I just made a gaff, by buying new hardware that may not work at all or even be supported in my freeNAS system.
I take out the old guts, and put in the new guts. My freeNAS image is on a 32GB sdCard that is read by an external 3.5 inch card reader connected via USB 2.0 to the motherboard. The system boots up flawlessly and works without a single change needing to be made! I did not even have to set the boot order, it booted from the card reader and did its magic... and soon was occupying the same IP it had before.
Glorious victory!
The other nice thing is that the system went from a 130W CPU to 65W. So the cost of running it has been reduced dramatically. I win, and I win. Long live freeNAS!
Thank you.
I set up a nice 6 x 3.0TB freeNAS array, using an old Gigabybyte GA-X58A-UD3R and an i7-920. The system flew, and I was very very happy. Coppied all my data over and used it as the heart of storage for a bunch of computers in our organization.
Then, disaster strikes... the motherboard starts having issues and goes into a never ending boot loop... after PS replacements, memory replacement, nothing seems to get her back up. I came to the conclusion that the motherboard has seen its last days. So the decision I faced was: Do I buy another 1366 socket motherboard, most likely manufactured around the same time my old board, or do I jump to something else? Socket 1366 boards are not cheap, and finding a good x58a chipset board is no picnic, seems many manufacturers had all sorts of issues with them.
So, I decide to dump the old MB/CPU combo, and get something NEW and more reliable. I settle on the new Asus F2A85-M/CSM + AMD A6-640K CPU. I sheepishly take it home wondering if I just made a gaff, by buying new hardware that may not work at all or even be supported in my freeNAS system.
I take out the old guts, and put in the new guts. My freeNAS image is on a 32GB sdCard that is read by an external 3.5 inch card reader connected via USB 2.0 to the motherboard. The system boots up flawlessly and works without a single change needing to be made! I did not even have to set the boot order, it booted from the card reader and did its magic... and soon was occupying the same IP it had before.
Glorious victory!
The other nice thing is that the system went from a 130W CPU to 65W. So the cost of running it has been reduced dramatically. I win, and I win. Long live freeNAS!
Thank you.
