Upgrade FreeNAS to TrueNAS on Microserver Realistic?

[apel]

am a newby around, sorry about the dumb questions

I currently have FreeNAS-11.3-U5 on HP Microserver N40L 4GB. It is use for nightly backups and files repository.

Storage is 4x4TB lz4 one pool, one Samba share. Boots from a USB stick.

It is joined to a Windows domain. The only other task are three cron jobs to rsync a number of folders from other machines

Users seldom need to access the shares.

As it stands, it works satisfactorily. Max CPU usage less than 50% System load peak 3.2 mean 0.6

Is it realistic to upgrade to TrueNAS? if so in situ or from scratch?

Would it be better to reinstall on a SSD? would the pool be preserved?

Thank you

 

[Adrian]

I run TreNAS on this:
HP N36L Microserver, 8 GB
AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor
4 * 2 TB WD Red as RAIDZ1
2 * mirrored Sandisk Cruzer Fit 1.00 boot USB sticks
TrueNAS-12.0-U5.1

It is very lightly loaded, but does work.
Upgrading from 4 to 8 GB of memory would be a good idea. iXsystems minimum recommendation.
That done, upgrade in situ should work.
A cheap USB to SATA adapter and SATA disk would be better than a USB stick. I use a USB to M2 adapter in another machine but suitable M2 cards seem hard to find. Old USB sticks seem to keep on running. Newer ones seem to die fast, especially if they hold your system dataset.
Your pool will be preserved unless you try very hard to lose it. But backups are always good.
Saving your configuration before the disk switch and restoring it afterwards will make life a lot easier.

 

[apel]

This is encouraging, thanks.
My box has a free SATA port I could use for a SSD. I can backup the configuration but not the data. Is a re-install confuration compatible and data safe?

Given the HW costs and possible trouble what am I to gain by moving to the latest version?

 

[Adrian]

A re-install is fairly safe, bar major finger trouble, like installing to a data disk.
Not having backups should be worrying. Things can happen that destroy all your spinning data. Fire, hardware going berserk, ...
If you have backed up your configuration and are installing to a new SSD, you can always revert to your USB stick.
If you do not upgrade you are missing out on the bug fixes and enhancements. Some choose to stay with old versions letting others try out the bleeding edge or follow the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

 

[jgreco]

I currently have FreeNAS-11.3-U5 on HP Microserver N40L 4GB. It is use for nightly backups and files repository.

FreeNAS and TrueNAS both require a minimum of 8GB of memory. It may "work" on less, but in years past, people have lost pools over that.

The N40L can take 8GB or even 16GB of RAM (despite HP saying it is capped at 8GB).

 

[apel]

"if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

wise words

 

[apel]

people have lost pools over that.

Now I am really scared and off to search for a suitable RAM upgrade.

 

[jgreco]

Now I am really scared and off to search for a suitable RAM upgrade.

In all fairness, I haven't actually heard of this happening in some time now, and it SHOULDN'T happen, but it is an old issue we never got to the bottom of.

 

[apel]

Microserver now upgraded to 8GB and fitted a SSD boot drive. I have made a configuration backup including passwords to a separate USB stick. What is the safest way to install the latest version.

Would it be wiser to unplug the storage pool drives, install, restore config and then re-insert the storage drives?

 

[jgreco]

Microserver now upgraded to 8GB and fitted a SSD boot drive. I have made a configuration backup including passwords to a separate USB stick. What is the safest way to install the latest version.

Would it be wiser to unplug the storage pool drives, install, restore config and then re-insert the storage drives?

There's slight risk in removing and reinserting drives into a hardware platform.

There's also slight risk of operator error when installing or upgrading NASware.

It's difficult to judge which is more risky. I think it is safe to say that you cannot misinstall FreeNAS on a data drive if they are not plugged in, and sometimes there's a little bit of drama with boot device ordering, so it is kinda nice to be able to get the appliance installed and tested to be booting before adding the drives.

 

[apel]

At last I found the time and courage to upgrade to V12 onto a SSD. All went according to plan which is very satisfying.

I noticed the message "New ZFS version or feature flags are available for pool ..."

I don't know what is the purpose and it works without it so I shall ignore it for now.

Thank you all for the support.

 

[Samuel Tai]

You can ignore new ZFS feature flags if you ever want to revert to 11.3-U5. Once you upgrade your pool to the newer flags, you won't be able to go back.

 

[apel]

The upgrade created one issue I am unable to resolve.

a Cron job runs as user administrator
rsync -atvO --del -e ssh root@grison:/mnt/disk2/Kloster/Backup/Lucerne/Macrium/SSD/ /mnt/Pool-Mollis/nas/Backup-Drives/LU/SSD

grison is a legacy Buffalo NAS (don't ask)

AFAICS every ssh keys have been restored for user administrator.

I ran ssh -vv grison and the last two lines are

debug1: kex: algorithm: (no match)
Unable to negotiate with grison port 22: no matching key exchange method found. Their offer: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1

My guess is that V12 does not allow sha1. How do I override this please

 

[Samuel Tai]

SHA1 for SSH key exchange is no longer secure. On grison, you'll need to modify sshd_config's KexAlgorithms option. See https://www.ssh.com/academy/ssh/sshd_config.

 

[apel]

Unfortunately I don't think it is possible on this old Buffalo Linksation WX2.0TL

Is there any way I can get truenas to negotiate sha1 with this specific device only. In any case this is a small environment with only two users.

 

[Samuel Tai]

Yes, you can edit /root/.ssh/config and add:

Code:

Host grison
  KexAlgorithms +diffie-hellman-group1-sha1

 

[apel]

that did it, thank you. Instead of the config file I inserted it directly into the Cron job command which is more targeted:

rsync -atvO --del -e "ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1" root@grison:/mnt/disk2/Kloster/Backup/Lucerne/Macrium/SSD/ /mnt/Pool-Mollis/nas/Backup-Drives/LU/SSD

happy ending

 

[jgreco]

That's awesome, I kept wanting to interject with something like that, but it really requires some experimentation to get the exact syntax of these things right. Congratulations and good job!

The Microservers are getting long in tooth, by the way, and power supplies tend to fail in these as they get old, because HP used a really small PSU. There's a seller on eBay that has replacements in case yours craps out. This can make a small, hardworking platform that's actually good for light backup duties continue on its way for more years.

 

[apel]

yes it needed a little T&E and one gets a warm glow when it works.

I have three HP uS acquired when they were marketed with cash back. Luckily they are still in good order working 24/7. I cannot say the same for the HDD.