The Version Question

[Itamar Croitoru]

Hi,

I'm working on an upgrade of a production FreeNAS deployment as a iSCSI SAN for VMware VMs. The current setup is going to keep the disk shelves and replace the head unit.

The current unit is running 9.10 with all the latest updates.

I was wondering if everyone agrees that 11.2 is mature enough yet to handle this workload or if I should stick to 9.10 for this use case

 

[HoneyBadger]

TrueNAS builds are up to the 11.2-U6 branch as of the start of October, so I would hope that indicates the matching FreeNAS version is considered stable enough.

I will say that I've seen a lot of gremlins reported that seem to have resolved by "use the legacy web interface" so that might be worthwhile.

Hardware specs on the head unit?

 

[Itamar Croitoru]

TrueNAS builds are up to the 11.2-U6 branch as of the start of October, so I would hope that indicates the matching FreeNAS version is considered stable enough.

I will say that I've seen a lot of gremlins reported that seem to have resolved by "use the legacy web interface" so that might be worthwhile.

Hardware specs on the head unit?

The one I have ready is a HP DL 360 G7 with 144 GB of ECC RAM.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The one I have ready is a HP DL 360 G7 with 144 GB of ECC RAM.

1U systems might have issues fitting the necessary devices. You'll need enough PCI slots to fit an HBA for the disk shelves, a manner of connecting to your network, and likely an NVMe SLOG to get the performance needed to give good VMware iSCSI performance.

 

[Itamar Croitoru]

1U systems might have issues fitting the necessary devices. You'll need enough PCI slots to fit an HBA for the disk shelves, a manner of connecting to your network, and likely an NVMe SLOG to get the performance needed to give good VMware iSCSI performance.

It actually has everything I need. I checked for that.

 

[HoneyBadger]

It actually has everything I need. I checked for that.

Would you mind posting the exact models? The "HBA vs RAID card" path has been well-traveled by now but not all NVMe devices make for suitable SLOG devices. You'll also need to consider how you'll connect the internal bays if you plan to use them for anything other than a boot device.

 

[Itamar Croitoru]

Would you mind posting the exact models? The "HBA vs RAID card" path has been well-traveled by now but not all NVMe devices make for suitable SLOG devices. You'll also need to consider how you'll connect the internal bays if you plan to use them for anything other than a boot device.

What I meant was, I plan to use the same HBA and internal disks for this new head server as in the current Dell R310. My plan is to transfer the parts over, reinstall the OS, and take advantage of the rest of the server already being ready, since it was used for VMware ESXi 5.5 before this.

 

[Itamar Croitoru]

I've gone with 11.2-U6 and I'm fairly happy with it.

I'm not impressed with the new GUI at all and while I performed the setup through it, I find I'm in the old GUI most of the time to check stats or settings.

So far though, performance is better but I expected that with newer/better hardware.