QUERY: FreeNAS installation on internal SD card in HP ProLiant DL320e Gen8

[ToniCapablo]

Hello everybody!

I was looking for many sections of the forum and I did not find any specific place where it explains exactly the query I am going to do:

- ServerHP ProLiant DL320e Gen8 (it has place for internal SD card slot)
- RAM: 4 GB (I will update with more RAM by prerequisites from FreeNAS)
- HDD: 4 disks HP 2 TB 7.2K rpm (this is the storage where FreeNAS will have)
- Update to Service Pack April 2017

I want to do a fresh install of FreeNAS (latest version available) but I did not find how to do the installation of FreeNAS in this SD card, booting from the internal SD card slot. Is it possible? Has to be in a specific format (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS...)? Any specific model from SD cards?

Now, the SD card that I have is a 16 GB SanDisk with 90 MB/s velocity.

I tried to do by myself, with a FreeNAS installer in a pendrive USB attached to the server, but there is no way to select the SD card in order to install FreeNAS. This SD card works without any issue in any laptop or PC.

Any idea from this? Thanks in advance.

Regards,

 

[danb35]

SD cards really aren't a good choice as a boot device; they're even worse in that regard than USB sticks. But even so, if it presents to FreeBSD as a mass storage device, you should be able to install to it. The fact that you aren't seeing it as available in the installer suggests that your system is not treating it as a mass storage device.

 

[ToniCapablo]

Perfect, thanks for the advice but... any idea how to configure a SD card like mass storage device?

Regards,

Toni.

 

[ToniCapablo]

But I am wondering, when you say try to config like mass storage device it implies to put SD card in a device to connect with the server in USB.

Is there any way to inserting the SD card directly in internal SD card slot, install the FreeNAS there?

 

[Zredwire]

I have an HP ML350 G6 and it has the internal SD card slot. I am not using it but it seems like I saw something in the BIOS about enabling it. I can't remember exactly though.

 

[joeinaz]

Some thoughts:
1. What CPU(s) do you have?
2. What RAID card do you have installed?
3. Be advised it needs DDR3 UDIMMs which are somewhat expensive.
4. Typically the SDcard was used to boot VMware; with the SDcard in place, go to the BIOS see if the SDcard is an allowable boot option.

If after everything is known and it is still cost effective to use DL320, one approach is may be to boot VMware from the SDcard and install FreeNAS on a PCIe based SSD.

 

[Chris Moore]

Now, the SD card that I have is a 16 GB SanDisk with 90 MB/s velocity.

SD cards don't hold up well to the constant activity they get from FreeNAS. You really need to use a small SSD for the boot media.