Freenas 8 on Hp Microsvr Nl361

[nindy]

Hi,

Recently discovered this sofware sounds great ! A question I wanted to ask is I'm installing Freenas on this HP Microserver Nl361, I take it Freenas 8 requires an OS before you can install it?

Is Redhat free ?

Any suggestions and advice appreciated, by the way I have no CD rom on the svr only USB ports. Also I can not seem to find any docs on how to install and configur ethis software.

Thanks !

 

[geordie2011]

Hi

I also have this microserver, freenas actual uses freebsd as the os, what I have done is install freenas onto a usb memory stick and it boots from there and works extremely well!!

I have installed a cheap dvd drive to install the software but you can use another computer with a optical drive to install onto the memory stick then configured on your microserver, it is very easy to do!

Hope this helps

 

[Rampage]

or you can simply take the installation image and write it to the usb stick without the need of an optical drive using dd or similar tools for windows

 

[nindy]

Appreciate it the fast reply's Thanks ! :)

 

[dnel]

Hi, I'm planning on installing freenas on my microserver. I have only the supplied 1GB of ram and doubt I'll get a chance to upgrade this soon. Do you run it using the supplied memory and does it work well with ZFS?

 

[golemcito]

You will need, at least, another 4Gb Stick...

 

[dnel]

what the impact of having too little memory, will it just not work at all or work but very slowly?

 

[geordie2011]

I tried it with 1 gb in and it works but is very unstable put 8gb in now and its flawless

 

[matthewowen01]

to the original poster. redhat EWWWWWWWWWWWWW... moving on, FreeNAS is a distribution based off of FreeBSD. it is it's own OS, you do not need one.

to dnel:
only having 1 GB of ram will Severely impact performance. ZFS needs memory to function well.

 

[dnel]

Has anyone tried using Freenas with the HP/Seagate 250GB hard disk that is supplied with the Microserver?

I've tried 8.0 and 8.0.1 but neither can see the disk at all. It is picked up by the BIOS and Linux sees it and can use it.

I'm booting from USB so the disk should be seen as an additional drive like the 3 others installed that are detected ok.

I've tried swapping drive bay with another disk and it's always the same disk that isn't detected so why can't Freenas see it?

 

[Milhouse]

Has anyone tried using Freenas with the HP/Seagate 250GB hard disk that is supplied with the Microserver?

I've tried 8.0 and 8.0.1 but neither can see the disk at all. It is picked up by the BIOS and Linux sees it and can use it.

I'm booting from USB so the disk should be seen as an additional drive like the 3 others installed that are detected ok.

I've tried swapping drive bay with another disk and it's always the same disk that isn't detected so why can't Freenas see it?

I don't think the SB700 southbridge used by the N36L is currently supported - see this thread:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=10372

I've installed FreeNAS 8 on the N36L (booting from 2GB USB stick) but I'm using an LSI 9211-8i disk controller and not the internal controller (which works fine with FreeNAS 0.7.2, by the way).

I suppose your option is to buy another SATA/HBA controller, or wait and stick with FreeNAS 0.7.2 for the time being until SB700 support is added (is there a bug for this lack of support - having an open ticket might speed things along).

 

[dnel]

I don't think the SB700 southbridge used by the N36L is currently supported - see this thread:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=10372

I've installed FreeNAS 8 on the N36L (booting from 2GB USB stick) but I'm using an LSI 9211-8i disk controller and not the internal controller (which works fine with FreeNAS 0.7.2, by the way).

I suppose your option is to buy another SATA/HBA controller, or wait and stick with FreeNAS 0.7.2 for the time being until SB700 support is added (is there a bug for this lack of support - having an open ticket might speed things along).

If there was a problem with the controller I would expect this would impact all disks, not just the HP rebranded Seagate drive. I can see the 3 other disks and create ZFS volumes with them.

In fact the HP drive is a Seagate 7200.12, two of the other working drives are 500GB versions of the same disk, the only difference is the HP custom firmware so it doesn't make sense why this would be a controller issue.

 

[TechGuyUK]

In fact the HP drive is a Seagate 7200.12, two of the other working drives are 500GB versions of the same disk, the only difference is the HP custom firmware so it doesn't make sense why this would be a controller issue.

I'm sure I read on another forum that reflashing the HP supplied drives firmware back to the standard Seagate firmware may resolve this issue. My N36L will not arrive until Wednesday though, so I'm not able to test this until later in the week - can anyone else confirm ?