SOLVED Should my boot device still be a flash USB drive?

[RoboKaren]

I caught threads and patches of a discussions of how the boot drives in future versions of FreeNAS will be mounted as R/W filesystems -- and thus we should plan on using hard drives or SSDs in the future as our boot devices, rather than the USB flash drives we use now.

1) I was not sure if this applied to 9.3beta. The online documention at docs.freenas.org specify that you should be using a compact flash, ssd, or usb flash device as the boot device.

http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_intro.html#compact-or-usb-flash


2) So I am assuming that this is a change that is coming later but wanted clarification on this point. If the recommendation is that we should be planning on using SSDs or spinning platters now or in the future, we might want to update the documentation on this fact so that new installs are future-ready.

 

[dlavigne]

That documentation is correct. Hard drives are still discouraged as one will lose a slot. We'll quickly find out which USB drives are crap and which work well once 9.3 is out and a larger userbase starts to use it. SATA DOMs are starting to look more attractive, assuming one has the hardware to support it.

 

[Mlovelace]

That documentation is correct. Hard drives are still discouraged as one will lose a slot. We'll quickly find out which USB drives are crap and which work well once 9.3 is out and a larger userbase starts to use it. SATA DOMs are starting to look more attractive, assuming one has the hardware to support it.

Sata DOMs are appealing but you can get a small SSD for less $, since you're still giving up a SATA slot.

 

[solarisguy]

@RoboKaren, As it was just posted, please re-read the piece you referenced. When I read it, I do not see it recommending hard drives.

In general, the current wording looks OK, but I understand that you are suggesting that there should be better information about new FreeNAS writing to the root/boot device more than ever before ? Agreed. However, I would love to learn what is going to be written there... The log files and performance data are in .system. Samba files were in .system, where are they going to be looking forward? Etc.

For my FreeNAS 9.3 installation, I am now saving for two mirrored USB Windows To Go certified devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go

I do not like their price point - even of 32GB ones, but I do not need to use SATA ports (which are in limited supply in my systems), while I have many otherwise unused USB ports.

 

[RoboKaren]

@solaris - You misunderstood my point. I said that there are discussions in the threads about the undesirability of flash in future versions of Freenas, but that the 9.3 documentation still recommends USB flash drives as the primary boot and discourages the use of hard drives.

For me, I have a ton of old USB-based portable 2.5" hard drives that are laying around my office. Many are in the 40G, 80G or 250G size. It'd be easy enough for me to implement them as boot drives without giving up a SATA slot. I imagine other people have similar collections of old equipment. So I could use a hard drive as a USB boot drive relatively easily if the documentation recommended it....

---

Back to my question.... right now, I have my Freenas 9.3beta configured so that system logs etc. are written out to one of my ZFS hard drive arrays.

1) In that scenario, is the USB flash / boot drive still being mounted read only (as in previous versions)?

2) And so is it still the case that the only time the USB boot drive written to is when there is a OS update? Or has freenas changed so that the boot drive is now being regularly written to -- which is the reason that cheap USB flash drives are expected to fail in regular freenas boot drive use?

This is where I'm confused -- and the documentation could use some clarity.

 

[sef]

1) No.
2) Was never the case, actually, since /data was writable (it's got the configuration database).

The new setup is going to be more intensive because it's not a flat 4GB; instead it's a ZFS pool.

 

[RobertT]

That documentation is correct. Hard drives are still discouraged as one will lose a slot. We'll quickly find out which USB drives are crap and which work well once 9.3 is out and a larger userbase starts to use it. SATA DOMs are starting to look more attractive, assuming one has the hardware to support it.

The USB i am using is quite good. It cost me $20 but to me totally worth it. Before I upgrade to 9.3 beta I took one of my older USB sticks (corsair voyager) and installed 9.2 on it and restored my config just to make sure I could easily roll back. Just looking at the boot time alone it was quite noticable difference.

 

[RoboKaren]

I grabbed an old 80GB USB 2.5" hard drive from my junk drawer and am installing 9.3beta on it. Will see how it works instead of the USB flash drive.

 

[joeschmuck]

I grabbed an old 80GB USB 2.5" hard drive from my junk drawer and am installing 9.3beta on it. Will see how it works instead of the USB flash drive.

It should work fine.

 

[joeschmuck]

For my FreeNAS 9.3 installation, I am now saving for two mirrored USB Windows To Go certified devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go
I don't understand what you are saying... What is special about a Windows To Go USB Flash Drive? As far as I can tell it should be a USB 3.0 device (meaning faster memory and I/O) but that was all I could find. I have a very nice USB 3.0 Flash drive I purchased a few years ago and it is fast but it cost me $60 back then. Here is a newer version of what I purchased and it's certainly a lot cheaper, just not sure how fast it really is.

 

[cyberjock]

I agree joeschmuck. The Windows To Go just expects a certain performance characteristic to be met for Windows. Aside from it guaranteeing you that you won't get a "bottom of the barrel USB drive" it does little else. The characteristics that are required for Windows To Go don't really translate to a "this will do better on FreeNAS". There's a large amount of supposition and assuming going on by trying to link "Windows To Go" to something for FreeNAS. Theyre' just not the same. :/

I'm still running a Corsair USB2 stick on one of my 9.3 beta test machines and it seems to work fine. Just don't try to bootup and do a ZFS scrub simultaneously. That just sucks as it adds 2-3 minutes to the bootup time. ;)

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm still running a Corsair USB2 stick on one of my 9.3 beta test machines and it seems to work fine. Just don't try to bootup and do a ZFS scrub simultaneously. That just sucks as it adds 2-3 minutes to the bootup time. ;)

Ouch :D

 

[Magnus33]

Cheap usb are not recommended since you never know what you got.
Heck even the good ones can sometimes fail suddenly (did happen with a 9.3 alpha actually)

Iam with cyber there no reason a good usb isn't perfectly fine for the job and with the prices of these things they are certainly cost effective.

My 9.3 beta is humming along quite happily on one.

 

[JoelN]

Thought I would add my two cents. During the move from 9.2.1.8 to 9.3 I went through three USB flash drives. First, I tried a GUI upgrade with my 16GB Sandisk Cruzer. It froze during the update and somehow in the process of trying to recover I rendered the Cruzer unusable. It could no longer be recognized in either of my computers trying multiple ports. I then purchased two PNY Attaché 16GB USB drives on sale and did a fresh 9.3 install. Both failed to complete the boot process failing at exactly the same place (forgive me, I can't remember exactly where). As a last resort I tried a Sandisk Extreme 16GB SDHC connected to a Sandisk Micromate card reader puchased to use with my digital camera. Jackpot! It worked great. Don't know why one works and the others didn't.

 

[joeschmuck]

Thought I would add my two cents. During the move from 9.2.1.8 to 9.3 I went through three USB flash drives. First, I tried a GUI upgrade with my 16GB Sandisk Cruzer. It froze during the update and somehow in the process of trying to recover I rendered the Cruzer unusable. It could no longer be recognized in either of my computers trying multiple ports. I then purchased two PNY Attaché 16GB USB drives on sale and did a fresh 9.3 install. Both failed to complete the boot process failing at exactly the same place (forgive me, I can't remember exactly where). As a last resort I tried a Sandisk Extreme 16GB SDHC connected to a Sandisk Micromate card reader puchased to use with my digital camera. Jackpot! It worked great. Don't know why one works and the others didn't.

To recover the "failed" drives, use something like Partition Wizard. That should do the trick unless the drives are physically damaged.

 

[jkh]

I caught threads and patches of a discussions of how the boot drives in future versions of FreeNAS will be mounted as R/W filesystems -- and thus we should plan on using hard drives or SSDs in the future as our boot devices, rather than the USB flash drives we use now.

I don't believe anyone has ever said that explicitly (and any inferences of that nature should be quashed). FreeNAS 9.3 will be using ZFS on such devices, but that doesn't mean that it's suddenly going to write on them a lot more after 9.3-RELEASE is out and the rate of change has slowed down to a more normal pace.

The advice is that same as it always was: Either use SATA DOMs, as they offer the best reliability and on-board mounting options, or higher-quality USB devices to boot FreeNAS. Now that you have the option, you should also consider more than one device of the same size and mirror your boot pool for greater reliability, an option you did not have before.

 

[solarisguy]

@joeschmuck, that is the only certification I am aware of. For me it serves as a quality control measure. Of course, I would prefer a Unix To Go certificate :)

I have no idea. Maybe cheaper USB memory devices would be still enough in 9.3. However, the talk about SATADOM has scared me. Although, I only take care of home installations, we have substantial data storage that does not consist of items that could be watched on-line, bought anywhere or downloaded. As simple items as school or university projects are expected to be available when needed, not when another boot device finally works...

That is at home, so no cards giving abundance of SATA ports...

Oh, jkh has just spoken. In light of his statement↑, I think I will stay for a moment with non-trash quality mirrored USB flash memory.

 

[JoelN]

To recover the "failed" drives, use something like Partition Wizard. That should do the trick unless the drives are physically damaged.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

 

[cyberjock]

I don't think I've seen anyone say it would ever be read/write for the boot device. There's been talk about ZFS being a little harder on the boot device because it's CoW and because of its structure compared to UFS. But definitely not being r/w. That's not likely to ever change as it's an insurance policy against people being stupid. You fubar the boot device while it is read-only and on reboot it'll be undone because it was read-only.

 

[RobertT]

Is there any way we can benchmark the speed of our boot device?
Preferably in such a way that the other hardware wont change the results..