Hard Drive Replacement Cheat Sheet

[joeschmuck]

So I see this sort of thing a lot now that FreeNAS is getting a few years of use, hard drives are starting to fail and several users that are posting are having a difficult time replacing a hard drive. This is primarily due to the system being setup and left alone. Isn't that how we all would prefer our equipment to operate, turn it on and leave it alone and it just works.

I have created this simple cheat sheet which would presumably be attached to or near your FreeNAS device so you could have it available and it would be customized to the version of FreeNAS which you are running. Many companies do this sort of thing to give the customer a quick reference tool and I see no reason we couldn't do this here as well.

There will be some folks who would rather reference the users manual, and there will be some users who just know what to do, but there will be many users who forgot everything.

What I'd like to know is what other folks think about this and if there are any other useful information which should be added. This doesn't have to deal with replacing a hard drive, it could be with how to add a user to the system, especially if it's complicated. Maybe the adding a user thing isn't quite the best example as I'd rather have that wherever I'm managing the system, not at the FreNAS box itself. But you get the point. I'm thinking maintenance of the hardware more than anything else.

And of course anyone can add unique information for their setup, maybe even attach a CD-ROM with a copy of the configuration, the FreeNAS installation program, a PDF of the User Manual, and if you have an encrypted drive, all the data needed to recover there as well. I would also add WDIdle3 for myself. This would eventually become a full recovery kit.

And to be honest, eventually I will settle down and stop updating FreeNAS every time a new version comes out and I will drop off the forums, then when my NAS decides to fail, I'll have all the information handy to recover without having to need an internet connection and hope the old instructions are still there and the hosting server is running. Who knows, FreeNAS forums could be gone as well. Look at the original FreeNAS which is now NAS4Free. Who wants to hunt this information down when all you want to do is protect your data.

So give it a look and I invite opinions. Please keep the negative comments civil, because I'm certain someone will say it's not needed, but I'm certain someone will love the idea as well.

-Mark

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not sure this is a "good" idea. The reason is that the manual does covers disk replacement step-by-step. Now if your guide covered "identifying a bad disk when you know of a failed one" that would be useful.

Then things get ugly... you've been here so you can expect questions like:

1. smartctl scrolls a bunch and I don't see a serial.. what am I doing wrong?
2. ada0 doesn't work, what am I doing wrong?
3. I can't offline the disk and I scrubbed it... what am I doing wrong?

I'm sure I could think of more, but I think you get the idea. ;)

I think its a bad idea to have a cheatsheet covering what is also in the manual. If something changes the manual may be updated and your cheatsheet won't. That's why I've revised the steps in the manual versus trying to do any kind of disk replacement document that is a standalone document. Standalone documents are almost never maintained.

 

[solarisguy]

I am glad that I do not have to make any decisions, while I can make suggestions...

In my opinion, the manual could be split into

• Concepts & Installation
• Operation (sharing, iSCSI)
• Maintenance (scrub, S.M.A.R.T, drive replacement, monitoring, upgrades)
• Advanced Topics (plugins, jails, running in a VM)

It is pure psychology. If I am facing 200+ pages of documentation, my first thought is not to check how many pages are related to my topic, because I feel overwhelmed. A manual under 100 pages sounds way better.

I understand why someone might want to keep the number of versions to a bare minimum, but FreeNAS is a complex ecosystem/infrastructure/software and beyond certain trivialities (it's a NAS, man...) there is lots of ground to cover.

Also, as you cyberjock at least once mentioned in the forum, there is a problem with the way documentation is created. Right now, 9.2.1 is cast in stone, and if any contribution is made, that is supposed to be 9.3 documentation. That is the reason I have created an account at doc.freenas.org only now. I do not have resources to run 9.3-ALPHA in addition to my 9.2.1.5-RELEASE. And changes between 9.2.1 and 9.2.1.6 are sometimes substantial.

Back to the topic... I do not see any contradiction between a Hard Drive Replacement Cheat Sheet and The Manual ;) . The manual could just always incorporate the current cheat sheet. That is, if you ever wanted to make a change you would change the cheat sheet and afterwards incorporate it as a chapter in the manual.

And this PDF goes into the right direction, but it is way too short. It would only cover some cases. As I wrote above, it could be a part of the manual and cover all the cases.

 

[solarisguy]

Errata...

There is 9.2.1.6 ERRATA‎‎ on doc.freenas.org...

 

[joeschmuck]

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate them.

So this cheat sheet was based on my knowledge level so I would not have any issue understanding it. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to see the problem from someone else's shoes but I get the point. As for when someone runs into trouble and the cheat sheet can't help, that is where the forums or the Manual comes in play.

Getting to the manual reorganization that solarguy mentioned, I think that is a very good idea. The Maintenance section would be where the type of information I'm looking for to be handy, not something you must figure out where it's hiding. Of course you will never cover all situations but where possible you would want to offer some troubleshooting advice. I have no ideas off the top of my head how to approach that because as said above, FreeNAS is complex and I completely agree with that. I don't know if any of us want to rewrite the user manual, that would be a huge undertaking.

Well headed off to work again.