FreeNAS on SUN 7000 Series Hardware ?

[markw78]

We have an older SUN 7210 (48 disk), never bought a Log/Cache SSD for it due to cost, and no longer have support on it anyways.

Would it be possible to run FreeNAS on this hardware? I don't see why not... Install FreeNAS to USB, get our own SSD for Log/Cache... I was thinking we may even be able to import our ZPools

Of course it's also quite possible you can't do this, I wonder if you can even adjust the boot order etc...

Has anyone tried this or know?

 

[ProtoSD]

It won't work if it has a Sparc CPU.

 

[JaimieV]

You may well be able to run FreeNAS on it (dual Opteron CPUs), though I'm not sure why you'd want to - it comes with a dedicated NAS version of Solaris, with full ZFS support (ZFS being written by Sun originally, of course). Even though your support on it has run out, you won't get support on a homebrew FreeNAS box anyway so you're not gaining anything.

What would moving to FreeNAS give you that FishWorks doesn't? I can't think of anything, but it's a long time since I had a half-hour play with one! It's quite likely you can even add an SSD ZIL without spending on the Sun one, although you'll need a 2.5"->3.5" tray converter with the right locations. You could certainly do it from the command line, the GUI might stop you.

 

[markw78]

1) Log/Cache SSD disks - The device with the SUN software will not run a non-SUN SSD, aka $10,000...

2) Software updates - without support, you can't get new software revisions from Oracle

3) FreeNAS does things better... We are not aloud to even connect the SUN NAS to the network due to shortcomings in the software from a security perspective, so it is ONLY attached to the storage network which makes management and alerting a huge pain.

4) I've dealt with SUN support before, a few times... I'd rather rely on the FreeNAS Community than Oracle support based on my previous experiences.

"It's quite likely you can even add an SSD ZIL without spending on the Sun one, although you'll need a 2.5"->3.5" tray converter with the right locations."

I was going to buy a 7410 Log SSD for it off eBay, but was told by Oracle it would not work because of firmware (I didn't tell them I was looking to buy used, I told them I had one from a retired system) - different part numbers too.

 

[JaimieV]

All good points. (3) is the killer, absolutely.

Re the ZIL: If you can get to the command line, you can add any device as a ZIL - so bang in a commercial SSD, log in as root, and assign it. The firmware issue should be irrelevant to the command line.

There are two likely issues: First is getting the 7120 to boot FreeNAS; the second is whether FreeNAS has (or can be persuaded to have) the drivers for the storage and network devices. I'd suggest putting the FreeNAS image on a 3.5" HDD and trying that, but I'm five years rusty with Solaris/x86.