Can't put in a bug fix if you can't reproduce the problem, can you? That's always been our problem. When the devs were more active in the forum we look at it, and we couldn't figure it out. Eventually it was a "declare defeat and don't do it with data you don't have backed up". You'll also find that many of the old threads from 2012 and 2013 (before we walked away from ESXi as a forum) just don't exist in here anymore, many won't open even if you have links, and the search engine won't find them even with proper queries. I've got tickets in the bug tracker to fix these problems but nobody has a clue why this is the case, but it all happened when we migrated from vBulletin to XenForo. So blame the forum migration of 2013.
Sorry, but you haven't been here long enough to make that statement; and it is very much incorrect. A small number of people don't go cheap when they go ESXi. I didn't go cheap when I virtualized FreeNAS. But by large and far, the vast majority of users that go with ESXi are doing it because they are cheap and trying to do it for cheap. And nobody does ESXi because it's more expensive. That doesn't make sense. I've been here for almost 3 years, and I can say this with experience. I was there. I was trying to help people recover their pools over Teamviewer, quite often for free and on my own time. I wanted to know what was going wrong. I wanted to know because I wanted assurance that the problem wasn't going to be on my server next. (Self-preservation at its finest!) Every time someone loses a pool I always want to know the whys and how it could have been avoided. Most of my advice regarding scrubs, SMART, ECC RAM, things you should do and things you shouldn't, etc are because of learned experience from those that have lost their data. I'd rather people learn from those that lost their data than become a statistic themselves. Only a small number of users on this forum do backups. Unfortunate, but also true.
And that statement I said above about "don't do it with data you don't have backed up".... guess what those cheap people that went with ESXi did? They didn't do a backup because it was too expensive (remember, they are doing it "on the cheap"). Doesn't make what they did the right thing to do, but they still do it, and when we've got people every 2nd or 3rd day starting another thread that begins with "so my pool won't mount and I can't find my data" that doesn't go well for the FreeNAS project, and definitely doesn't go well for someone that's trying to grow a user base that is measured in 4-digits. It makes it look like our product is totally untrustworthy. Doesn't matter how much they do right (or wrong), get 3-4 of those threads on the first page of every section of the forum and potential users decide they don't want to trust our product. After a while you have to cut off your nose despite your face.
And to be honest, compared to how things were 2 years ago, and despite whoever might want to argue otherwise, there's one undeniable truth.
Unfortunately twice this week I've seen threads that have missing data and they virtualized. How many have I seen from bare metal installs that could be related to anything that isn't clearly user error? Zero. There was one user that has a single disk for his pool and can't mount it because he's missing other disks. But that's not a software problem.
Sorry, but you haven't been here long enough to make that statement; and it is very much incorrect. A small number of people don't go cheap when they go ESXi. I didn't go cheap when I virtualized FreeNAS. But by large and far, the vast majority of users that go with ESXi are doing it because they are cheap and trying to do it for cheap. And nobody does ESXi because it's more expensive. That doesn't make sense. I've been here for almost 3 years, and I can say this with experience. I was there. I was trying to help people recover their pools over Teamviewer, quite often for free and on my own time. I wanted to know what was going wrong. I wanted to know because I wanted assurance that the problem wasn't going to be on my server next. (Self-preservation at its finest!) Every time someone loses a pool I always want to know the whys and how it could have been avoided. Most of my advice regarding scrubs, SMART, ECC RAM, things you should do and things you shouldn't, etc are because of learned experience from those that have lost their data. I'd rather people learn from those that lost their data than become a statistic themselves. Only a small number of users on this forum do backups. Unfortunate, but also true.
And that statement I said above about "don't do it with data you don't have backed up".... guess what those cheap people that went with ESXi did? They didn't do a backup because it was too expensive (remember, they are doing it "on the cheap"). Doesn't make what they did the right thing to do, but they still do it, and when we've got people every 2nd or 3rd day starting another thread that begins with "so my pool won't mount and I can't find my data" that doesn't go well for the FreeNAS project, and definitely doesn't go well for someone that's trying to grow a user base that is measured in 4-digits. It makes it look like our product is totally untrustworthy. Doesn't matter how much they do right (or wrong), get 3-4 of those threads on the first page of every section of the forum and potential users decide they don't want to trust our product. After a while you have to cut off your nose despite your face.
And to be honest, compared to how things were 2 years ago, and despite whoever might want to argue otherwise, there's one undeniable truth.
Unfortunately twice this week I've seen threads that have missing data and they virtualized. How many have I seen from bare metal installs that could be related to anything that isn't clearly user error? Zero. There was one user that has a single disk for his pool and can't mount it because he's missing other disks. But that's not a software problem.
