Assistance with FreeNAS setup or configuration.
Assistance with FreeNAS setup or configuration.
Hello everyone. We're dealing with an older server—Dell Poweredge 2950 equipped with a Perci 5/i RAID controller—and facing issues installing FreeNAS. Initially, it worked perfectly, but something went wrong during setup. Now I'm trying to reinstall on all six HDDs in RAID5, leaving one empty slot. After re-raiding the drives and configuring RAID5 across all six, FreeNAS only recognizes the already raided ones, not the empty one. When attempting to boot from the installed drive, it gets stuck. I've tried using alternative NAS solutions like Nas4Free, OpenMediaVault, Rockstor, or ZFSguru. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
FreeNAS or similar ZFS NAS systems generally avoid working with dishonest hardware. Avoid setting up RAID before installing FreeNAS; instead, use FreeNAS to build the RAID. This should function properly. Additionally, the OS tends to dislike such issues—consider switching to JBOD mode or completely turning off any hardware RAID support.
Hardware raid using a controller appears seamless to the operating system. The OS remains unaware that the data is spread across multiple drives. This leads to several issues: 1. The OS treats everything as a single disk, causing unexpected behavior in certain drive formats. 2. Full control over hardware is lost, increasing the risk of data handling errors. 3. RAID controllers often use proprietary methods that clash with OS expectations, resulting in failures. 4. Additional complications arise. Generally, hardware RAID isn't advised unless necessary, especially if you're using FreeNAS which offers robust software RAID solutions. Running hardware RAID can be risky—if the controller fails, you may be left with no viable option but to use the same model to recover data. This approach is unreliable and impractical. On the other hand, software RAID such as ZFS in FreeNAS works smoothly and is more dependable.
It's great to hear you're following the advice. I attempted the steps you recommended—boot from the CD and install without RAID—but the HDDs aren't being recognized. I checked the FreeNas forums and some users mentioned issues with Dell servers, so I considered trying Nas4Free as an alternative. You can find more details here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr...ive.23461/ Any further suggestions or other operating systems to explore would be appreciated. Thanks again for your support.
Have you considered turning off RAID or using JBOD? JBOD treats the HDDs as separate drives for the operating system, effectively skipping the RAID controller. NAS4Free is a modified version of FreeNAS, so differences are unlikely. Would you like to share your motherboard or server model number?
It's a Dell PowerEdge 2950 server with an Xeon processor. RAM is 4GB. The Perci 5/i controller isn't working—how do I disable the RAID controller? I only know how to turn off the entire RAID setup.
Hey there, just wanted to share that I successfully installed the Freenas. The steps were: disable the raid controller in the BIOS, add an internal HDD (from the motherboard's SATA ports, not the rest of the hotswap), install FreeNAS on the internal SATA drive, enable the raid controller and set it up, and that’s it! Thanks a lot for your help!