New User in Calgary Canada

[rstew]

Hey all, just checking in.
I was looking forward to using freenas to manage my home based dl380 G5 server.
Now I have read so many dire warnings however about total unrecoverable data loss caused by any number of misadventures, so I am not sure this is for me.
Also the server has a smart array card already set up as a Raid 5 with 4 sas drives, and it doesn't look like freenas plays well in that kind of setup. Am I correct that freenas wants to control the data drives directly?

I first loaded freenas onto an 8 gb USB stick before reading the suggested min 16gb size. The server seemed like it was booting from the stick ok but froze with a grub rescue message, which I have no clue what to do with.
I deleted the stick contents and now I can't seem to reformat it under Windows for some reason. Has freenas destroyed the file system somehow?

Thanks for any help!
rstew

 

[BigDave]

Welcome to the Forums!

Also the server has a smart array card already set up as a Raid 5 with 4 sas drives, and it doesn't look like freenas plays well in that kind of setup. Am I correct that freenas wants to control the data drives directly?

That is correct, RAID cards are not recommended with FreeNAS

Now I have read so many dire warnings however about total unrecoverable data loss caused by any number of misadventures, so I am not sure this is for me.

The silver lining of that is the community support available for this software and the User Guide too
You can learn (what not to do) from these posts, follow the best practice examples and get help if you need it.

The loss of data is in almost every single case, the fault of the administrator, catastrophic hardware failure
or natural disaster. Remember for every post you read there are (dare I say it, ok I will) thousands of
companies, institutions and individuals who use FreeNAS every day without issue.

Your machine sounds (I'm guessing) as if a simple investment of <$100 (HBA card instead of a RAID card)
would have you able to enjoy the use of FreeNAS. If your existing RAID card has a compatible chip-set
in it, that chip-set can be re-flashed to IT mode and update the firmware to match the driver in FreeNAS.
If the card you have is not compatible, a used HBA card can be had for a smallish investment.

 

[gpsguy]

I recommend doing a forum search for DL 380 and see if this has been discussed/resolved in the past.

Welcome to the forums! I envy your location, i.e. being close to the Canadian Rockies.

 

[rstew]

Bigdave & gpsguy; thanks for the welcome, and the feedback/suggestions.
I will do a little research and see what I come up with.
The machine is an HP DL380 G5 with a Smart Array P400 array controller card.
I recall reading somewhere on this forum yesterday that the P400 card is compatible with some driver or another, but of course now I can't find that info again.

What about the 8 gb usb stick; is there some way to format it again for use with Windows?

Thanks,
rstew

 

[rstew]

So I found a few threads dealing with using freenas with a DL380 G5, and here is my take:
The P400 RAID card does not play well with freenas, and setting each drive as a RAID 0 drive and letting freenas do the RAID work, is not a recommended workaround.
There is no IT passthrough mode available for the P400 card, so I would need to replace it with an HBA card of some type. Drive LED functionality would be lost and cabling from the HBA to the drive backplane might also be an issue.
And I figure it's about a 99.9% probability that my current 4 drive RAID 5 drive configuration would have to be reconfigured, all data would be lost and have to be loaded once again.
In other words a considerable hassle would erupt. Not sure I want to go through all this. Research continues.

rstew

 

[danb35]

And I figure it's about a 99.9% probability that my current 4 drive RAID 5 drive configuration would have to be reconfigured, all data would be lost and have to be loaded once again.

I'd increase that to 100%. Even if you kept the hardware RAID configuration (which is strongly discouraged), the array would need to be reformatted anyway unless you were already using ZFS on it.

What about the 8 gb usb stick; is there some way to format it again for use with Windows?

It's been partitioned; fdisk (or whatever has replaced fdisk) should be able to delete the partitions so the stick appears normal to Windows.

 

[artlessknave]

windows will not edit partitions on USB devices.
freenas (and freebsd) typically uses GPT rather than mbr. I have had nothing but trouble trying to do anything with gpt with in windows.
I just end up using dd to erase everything and then make a new mbr. there are a few 3rd party partition managers that can convert partitions on usb in windows (easeUS is one)

p400 should use standard 8087 sas, which is the same cable as the usually recommended m1015 oem lsi card that can be crossflashed to IT mode, so the cables to whatever backplane ought to be the same.

 

[rstew]

Thanks AR and danb for your advice.
I am experienced with EaseUS so I used it to de-partition and wipe the usb stick. Then I used windows to re-format it to FAT32, and all is well. (Not that the loss of a lousy 8 gb usb stick would have been heart-wrenching exactly!)
After researching freeNAS a bunch more though, I have decided to explore other server software options.
My reasons:
-though I did find several Intel HBA cards for sale to replace the P400 card, I am not keen on a non-expandable array system and the loss of functionality of the existing drive LED lights. I like to be able to add a new SAS drive on the fly to increase array capacity as needed.
-I also have no desire to get into anything where the slightest inadvertent miscue could result in total and complete unrecoverable data loss.
-I understand the need for backing up important data, but I want a RAID 5 or 6 array for rock solid data security, with the ability to simply hotswap a drive (and automatically rebuild) when an array drive starts going bad. I don't want to have to routinely back up the entire array data to yet another drive(s) so as to avoid possible catastrophe.

So I am happy for all the legions of satisfied freeNAS users out there, and I wish you well; it's just not for me!
Thanks,
rstew

 

[danb35]

I think you're overstating the risks here, but if the ability to safely add a disk to your array is important to you, you're right that FreeNAS isn't for you. Good luck.

 

[artlessknave]

Thanks AR and danb for your advice.
I am experienced with EaseUS so I used it to de-partition and wipe the usb stick. Then I used windows to re-format it to FAT32, and all is well. (Not that the loss of a lousy 8 gb usb stick would have been heart-wrenching exactly!)
After researching freeNAS a bunch more though, I have decided to explore other server software options.
My reasons:
-though I did find several Intel HBA cards for sale to replace the P400 card, I am not keen on a non-expandable array system and the loss of functionality of the existing drive LED lights. I like to be able to add a new SAS drive on the fly to increase array capacity as needed.
-I also have no desire to get into anything where the slightest inadvertent miscue could result in total and complete unrecoverable data loss.
-I understand the need for backing up important data, but I want a RAID 5 or 6 array for rock solid data security, with the ability to simply hotswap a drive (and automatically rebuild) when an array drive starts going bad. I don't want to have to routinely back up the entire array data to yet another drive(s) so as to avoid possible catastrophe.

So I am happy for all the legions of satisfied freeNAS users out there, and I wish you well; it's just not for me!
Thanks,
rstew

first off, I've basically never used hardware raid, so i have no experience with it, but a few things don't add up in your post.

-how is zfs non expandable? you can add pretty much any number of drives on the fly, hardware permitting, although this leads into the next point:

-the GUI generally prevents doing silly things, you have to muck about at the command line to really get the most out of pool mangling, so not an invalid concern.

-afaik hardware RAID 5 and 6 will only tell you when the *drive* is bad (after data could already be mangled), not when the *data* is bad; zfs will tell you at the first occurrence of *anything* being read wrong (checksums of the checksums). hardware raid (its really software raid anyway, just with dedicate cpu/ram) does not operate at the filesystem level so it does nothing(?) i think.

-RAID rebuilds the entire disk, sector by sector (1% and 100% utilization = full disk read/write); zfs rebuilds valid data only. if the data was bad long before the disk was flagged as failed, are you actually protecting anything?

-as with raidz1, raid5 should probably never be used, unless you have a backup or just don't care about loss.

-no backup for raid is the same as no backup for zfs; you still have *no backup*

-not only can you swap a drive with zfs, you can have as many spares ready to go as you have drive ports connected, whereas hardware raid is limited to ports accessible by the raid controller (a sas expander can mitigate this to a major extent at the cost of bandwidth)

seems like you simply trust hardware raid more and haven't done as much research into what each has to offer, which since thats hardware you already have is understandable to an extent.