Greetings and Felicitations!

[Smithcraft]

Hello!

So for some years I was running a simple JBoD for my media center. I knew and accepted the risks involved, but I was more interested in storage space over data safety. I mean, drives last forever right? ;) With that, I've been lurking here, trying to gain some insight into what I thought would be a fairly painless setup, but goodness! There is a great deal to learn!

So, here I am with the system set up in my sig, but right now, I don't have FreeNAS installed, and I'm just playing with the IPMI stuff. That is pretty cool! Hopefully I can get everything going and start getting stuff transferring sooner, rather than later.

I am hoping I can flash the RAID controller to IT mode from IPMI, but if not, I'll get it done some how!

I know I was supposed to buy my drives from different manufactures and vendors, but Fry's had a sale on the 3TB Reds, and I figured it was time to jump into the FreeNAS pool! Of course right after I buy the MoBo, Newegg has it on sale for another $40 less than what I paid for it.

As a side question, I set up my sig while my account was waiting for authorization. How do I make it so that it's a click to show the system details? Speaking of my sig, it must have been deleted when my account was authorized. :(

Finally, my thanks to the community and to iXsystems!

SC

 

[Smithcraft]

Since the sig is toast, the motherboard is the Supermicro X10SL7-F

So that was fun. I have it shut down now, but if anyone would be so kind as to answer a quick question or two...

Should I update the BIOS and IPMI to the current versions, and flash the SAS to v16?

I have another case on order (a Fractal Design Node 804), and I was wondering if when I move everything over, do I need to be concerned about which drive gets connected to which of the LSI ports? Or can I just mix and match drives and ports?

Thank you in advance!

SC

 

[gpsguy]

We can see your signature from my pc. If I were using Tapatalk instead, the signature wouldn't be visable.

X10SL7-F
Xeon E3-1231 v3
...
Newegg is pure evil...

btw, welcome to the forums!

 

[Smithcraft]

Sorry, there was an error between the keyboard and the chair!

I put the info in to my "About Me" page and not into my sig. I did fill in the sig eventually.

Thanks for the 9.3 PDF!

SC

 

[gpsguy]

Glad to help.

Yes, flash your controller to IT mode using phase 16. You can download the firmware from Supermicro. Directions for flashing it can be found via a forum search.

When you get your new case, there's no need to worry about how the drives were connected. FreeNAS uses gptid's to keep track of the drives.

Users (myself included) who have had to change their server hardware have found they can take their drives and boot device and stick them into a new machine and be up and running. The only thing that might need reconfiguring is the NIC, if it changed.

 

[Ericloewe]

I always update new hardware to the latest firmware version, since I'd rather avoid such low-level things in production. You'll want to flash the ME firmware as well (check the manual).
This way, it's easier to argue for an RMA if something goes wrong.

As for IPMI, you can do everything you can do locally.

 

[Smithcraft]

Sadly, work has kept me super busy, and I'm a bit behind in getting this going.

So I have flashed the 2308 to IT mode (with v16), updated the IPMI (to 1.92) and the BIOS (to 3.0 via USB drive), and I had it running memtest last night for several hours, and nothing turned up.

I've installed FreeNAS twice now, as I didn't have the second USB drive plugged in when I set it up, and for the life of me, I could not figure out how to set it up, or even see the second drive, from the interface.

I've run Rufus so many times the last few days, I think I may have set a world record...

Now I'm getting ready to hook up the drives to create the pool.

I confess that many times I get hung up on minor points and I think I am now.

When I configure/name the bunch of drives in the set up wizard, am I naming the zpool, or the VDev? I presume I'm setting up the VDev, but I'm just wanting to make sure.

Another item I'm thinking too much about is, is the VDev dedicated to a certain jail/application, or is the whole VDev available to all the jails/applications? Or when you create the datasets, are those dedicated to specific jails/applications? I presume the whole VDev is available to everything, and the datasets are jail/application specific.

My server is mostly going to be used as a media server. What I have done previously with my JBoD, was to copy the completed transcodes from the workstation across the network to the drives they would end up on targeting a temp folder. Then I would move them into the appropriate folders and then Plex would notice the difference and scan for new material. With FreeNAS will I be able to copy across the network to a temp folder, and then when the transfer is done, move the files where they need to be? Or do I need to shut off the Plex Media Server, and send the files directly where they need to be, and then restart the Plex Media Server?

Thanks again for the assistance!

SC

ps - I found that Plex didn't like partial files when it was trying to figure out what something was, and would often scrape the wrong information, so I developed the system mentioned above to make life easier for Plex.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

When I configure/name the bunch of drives in the set up wizard, am I naming the zpool, or the VDev? I presume I'm setting up the VDev, but I'm just wanting to make sure.

You're naming the pool, aka volume. Vdevs don't have names.

Another item I'm thinking too much about is, is the VDev dedicated to a certain jail/application, or is the whole VDev available to all the jails/applications? Or when you create the datasets, are those dedicated to specific jails/applications? I presume the whole VDev is available to everything, and the datasets are jail/application specific.

vdevs are made of one or more physical drives.
Pools are made of 1 or more vdevs.
You manage your storage using datasets.
Datasets cannot span pools.
You might want to (re)read cyberjock's presentation for noobies.

When you install your first jail or plugin, if you haven't already created a jails dataset, FreeNAS will create one for you.

You will be able to move your media via temporary storage the same way you used to, and you will be able to move media directly into the Plex storage if you have that shared. There's no need to shut down Plex, regardless of the platform, therefore, this is getting off-topic.

 

[Smithcraft]

As a matter of fact I have read that thread, and the presentation. From that presentation I gleamed that I do not need to use a ZIL, or a L2ARC.

My apologies for going off topic.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

My apologies for going off topic.

No worries, just sayin'.

 

[Smithcraft]

I'm about ready to pull what remaining hair I have out.

I tried setting up shares, but it seems that I can only share a new directory/dataset. This doesn't work well for moving close to a thousand directories and then placing them in the appropriate datasets. Or it doesn't want to work for me. I tired CIFS, AFS, and NFS.

Then I figured I'd set up FTP. That's not working either. Despite specifying my overall media directory as the mount point for the ftp user, it always mounts to the root directory. Also I can't get it to copy over directories.

Am I missing something? Search is painful with only having TLAs to search for...

SC

note: I watched the video for setting up 9.2 FTP, and I couldn't get the anon FTP to work at all.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I don't really understand the problem you're having with shares.

Rather than FTP, I would suggest SFTP. The idea is that you set up SSH access, and that automatically gives you SFTP access too. You can then use one of the many FTP clients that support SFTP, e.g. FileZilla (but make sure you download it from filezilla-project.org).

 

[Smithcraft]

LOL! I don't understand the problem I'm having with shares either!

I don't understand why when I specify the directory that I want an FTP client to connect to, it always connects to something else.

Then the Plex was acting funny, so I deleted the jail, and it associated bits, to start fresh.

Then it would give me the "Unable to find template" errors after going through the motions to create the jail.

I figured I must have done something special, so I went back to zero and reinstalled FreeNAS. I'm still getting the jail template issue! :(

SC

ps - I have searched about the template issue, and it seems that very few people want to share what's wrong and the fix.

 

[pirateghost]

Usually it's a bad network configuration for the plugins/templates issue. Make sure your network is configured properly

 

[Smithcraft]

It's configured the same way it was before, as nothing has changed with it's configuration.

SC

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

It's configured the same way it was before, as nothing has changed with it's configuration.

Would help if you posted your actual network configuration ;)

 

[diedrichg]

I always update new hardware to the latest firmware version, since I'd rather avoid such low-level things in production. You'll want to flash the ME firmware as well (check the manual).
This way, it's easier to argue for an RMA if something goes wrong.

As for IPMI, you can do everything you can do locally.

Even the BIOS or are you just talking about things such as expansion cards? I mean, there are very large, red warnings on the Supermicro site saying to not flash the BIOS. And I've always read that even for consumer grade boards not to update unless there is a specific feature that you need from the update.

Also, I thought there was some situation where you had to email and beg Supermicro for the BIOS update?

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

You can update the supermicro bios yourself. They even include a howto. The only reason for the warning is because a lot can go wrong while updating and people complain to supermicro when they mess up.

 

[Ericloewe]

Even the BIOS or are you just talking about things such as expansion cards? I mean, there are very large, red warnings on the Supermicro site saying to not flash the BIOS. And I've always read that even for consumer grade boards not to update unless there is a specific feature that you need from the update.

Everything. If something fails, RMA. That's why I do it after buying it.

Later, it's on a need to/nice to have basis.

Also, I thought there was some situation where you had to email and beg Supermicro for the BIOS update?

Maybe for very specific revisions or something. Not as a matter of principle.

 

[Smithcraft]

Would help if you posted your actual network configuration ;)

What would you like to know?

FTP is now working, so I have a bit of transfer going on for the next day or so. Of course Plex is not responding. But getting the files on to the server is a bigger deal to me than dealing with Plex right now.

SC