Repurposing an older TrueNAS -- but retaining failover capabilities

[Gushi]

Hey all,

I have an older TrueNAS Enterprise box that was sold to us by IX running 9.3, back in the day. It's either a first or second generation system.

We're retiring it (replacing with Dell ME4012) and I'd like to re-use it to tool around with stuff, including the failover functionality that we bought and paid for.

Every time you log in, it asks you for a new license key, which IX won't sell to us out of warranty. If you hit cancel, it will keep going, but that doesn't lend itself to doing a "clean install".

Has anyone had any experience with IX giving out licenses for homelab use or the like? Is there some modern way in TrueNAS Core to do this without a license, treating the two blades as simply independent systems with common access to the same storage (I don't know what the architecture is).

Note carefully: I'm not looking for a "crack" or a "keygen" here or anything shady. I just want to be able to use this piece of hardware as it was sold.

Thanks!

 

[jgreco]

ISC Gushi?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hi @Gushi - an "expired" license (out of support) should still be valid from a functionality perspective, it's just prompting you that you're outside the warranty and support period.

Can you send me a DM with your system serial number (both standalone and HA)?

Thanks!

 

[Gushi]

ISC Gushi?

"Why have we never seen Clark and Superman at the same time?"

Heh, usually I keep my "ISC" identity (dmahoney, the BIND people, root DNS operator, we're here to help!), and my "Gushi" identity (weird sci-fi/alt-scene geek who dabbles in open source sysadminnery and hosts artists' websites)....

But yes, it me...there's enough crossover that when I post from my gushi.org account on mailing lists saying "Hi, I don't want to mention their name, but someone is making things hard for $dayjob" it gets responded to real quick.

Anyway, in this particular case, this hardware's so old its off our books and I'll be moving the chassis to my personal cabinet at HE Fremont mainly as a toy.

I have no idea how one would go about getting something like a replacement blade or backplane or power supply for it if I needed one.

 

[jgreco]

The ball already seems to be rolling, so I'll just leave it be. You're in good hands with @HoneyBadger ...