Install FreeNAS on SD card or pen drive?

[ricardoconzatti]

Good morning, I am new to the forum, but old user of FreeNAS :)
I'm starting my project monograph graduate, two servers with VMware ESXi accessing VMs via iSCSI on FreeNAS.
I need to know if anyone has installed FreeNAS on pen drive or SD card and can direct me to any make or model or even speeds.
How to install an OS I chose the SD Kingston 8GB Class 10, what do you think?
I thank you.

 

[cyberjock]

Using a USB to SDcard adapter I have installed FreeNAS to an SD card. I don't recommend any model or brand in particular, but any major brand that is >2GB with class 10 should be fine. I'd expect that a Kingston 8GB Class 10 would work perfectly. Do note that not all USB to SD card adapters are bootable.

 

[sqwob]

faster usb sticks would only result in a faster boot time, and have very little impact on the performance, so you can pick just about any reliable brand.

 

[ricardoconzatti]

Yes, removable media would be to just install the OS. I'm doing some performance tests involving SD cards and pen drives. Thanks for the replies.

 

[pirateghost]

Wait, you are asking if anyone has installed to USB or SDCard?

USB install is the recommended method (even the docs tell you that, and how to do so)

1.4.3 Compact or USB Flash
The FreeNAS® operating system is a running image. This means that it should not be installed onto a hard drive, but rather to a USB or compact flash device that is at least 2 GB in size. If you don't have compact flash, you can instead use a USB thumb drive that is dedicated to the running image and which stays inserted in the USB slot. While technically you can install FreeNAS® onto a hard drive, this is discouraged as you will lose the storage capacity of the drive. In other words, the operating system will take over the drive and will not allow you to store data on it, regardless of the size of the drive.
The FreeNAS® installation will partition the operating system drive into two ~1 GB partitions. One partition holds the current operating system and the other partition is used when you upgrade. This allows you to safely upgrade to a new image or to revert to an older image should you encounter problems.

as already stated, there is not really a performance increase or benefit to a faster USB drive, aside from faster boot times and slightly faster to save settings in the WebGUI....it honestly doesnt matter what the OS is installed on once its booted. performance will come from the rest of the hardware

 

[ricardoconzatti]

Is that in my project I will do performance testing with virtual machines accessed locally on the server VM and FreeNAS installed on virtual machines that will be accessed via TCP / IP with iSCSI. The purpose of the SD card is not to occupy more HD than having higher performance.
I'm doing tests on SD cards will soon post the results here.
For now, thank you!

 

[pirateghost]

I dont understand what you are testing though. Must be a language barrier here, because there is nothing to test with USB thumbdrives. thats how 95% of us have it installed

 

[CLSegraves]

Resurrecting an old thread.

I'm trying to decide between:

1. 8GB USB 2.0 flash drive
2. 8GB SATA SD card

Would one be better than the other?

 

[joeschmuck]

Sorry you resurrected an old thread.

Use a USB 2.0 Flash Drive. Here is why... An SD card can become corrupt if not secured (powered down) properly. I have used SD cards as boot drives for other projects and if they cannot be locked out from being written to, well they can become corrupt. SD cards are not as robust as a USB drive in this respect due to the actual interface.

 

[CLSegraves]

I'll stick with the USB. Thanks! :)