Help with motherboard and CPU for new FreeNAS build

[itronin]

Progress, but this is flaky. First, I only have 4 drives at the moment. 10 more are due here on Friday. Honestly, I didn't think I'd get this far to justify spending $thousands on drives.

Does it help to say that we've all gone through this process? Some of us countless times and some of us still make basic mistakes? (like me)

Keep at it! You will get to your end goal!

 

[zack$]

These are the cables: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018YHS8BS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The cable appears to be able to be inserted in either direction on the motherboard. The only locking mechanism if you want to call it that is the clip that clips to the connector housing.

See next post.

If you can pull out the 8087 from the MB without having to press the clip (lock) then you likely have the 8087 in the wrong way into the MB.

It may sound foolish, but I also learnt this a while back when I too couldn't not see my drives on a Supermicro MB with an mini-sas port (only sata).

On a side note. I know you went with Promox. It's been a while since I've used it as well but I remember two (2) years ago when I was testing Freenas on Proxmox there was an issue with smart data being pass through to Freenas (known failed drive would not show smart warnings in Promox). This is important for drive monitoring under Freenas for knowing likely drive failure.

In this regard, FreeNAS is, however, certified to work on ESXI by ixsystems. As a result, I don't run TrueNAS on anything other than ESXI. I don't know if the issue with Promox has now been fixed (maybe someone else can advise).

 

[rskoss]

Baby steps
Does it survive a reboot?

Remember in the olden days when we had to physically walk to a computer to reboot it? I’m loving the 21st century.

Yes, reboot and all 4 drives are showing.

I still don’t like the dance I had to do to get them to show.

 

[itronin]

Like @Rand__ said "Baby Steps" - my 2 cents. Get the drives to appear in Proxmox before trying to pass them through to the FreeNAS guest. I don't know Proxmox but since you plan to use all the SATA ports in the FreeNAS guest you may be better off "passing through" the SATA controller devices to FreeNAS rather than individual drives. Individual drive PT is a PITA.

 

[rskoss]

I've had good luck with the cable matters and cable creations "low cost" SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 cables. It may seem like the SFF-8087 can be inserted either way but there is only one way that is correct. The end of the cable should "latch" and you should not easily be able to pull it out without pressing on the metal lever/tab. There should be either two holes or two indentations on the SFF-8087 receiver (motherboard side) that correspond to the flanges I have highlighted in the picture.

View attachment 17135

Thank you. I will examine connector and attachment.

 

[rskoss]

Does it help to say that we've all gone through this process? Some of us countless times and some of us still make basic mistakes? (like me)

Keep at it! You will get to your end goal!

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I do learn from my mistakes, I just wish I didn’t make so darn many.

 

[rskoss]

so based on what I'm seeing :

And assuming you have a Rosewill 4xxx series with 3 x 4 Hot swap cages...

Storage options:

2 SATA ports with SATADOM support (2 drives total)
2 SFF-8087 so you'll need 1 or 2 x SFF-8087 to SATA forward breakout cables (8 drives total)
2 SFF-8643 so you'll need 1 or
2 x SFF-8643 to SATA forward breakout cables (8 drives total)
2 Oculink ports means you can have 2 NVME drives plus the M.2 80.

Natively 18 SATA / SAS mix of drives
Plus 3 NVME ports
Plus 10Gbe SFP..

I really like this board. Very JOAT.

I'm liking this board more and more as you discover what it has.

 

[rskoss]

Thank you. I will examine connector and attachment.

Reporting back. I did confirm that the connectors are inserted the correct way. Those tiny holes in the attachment were not obvious.

I do not know if I had the cable in backwards when drives weren't showing up. I hope so. That would make it an easily correctable problem.

 

[rskoss]

If you can pull out the 8087 from the MB without having to press the clip (lock) then you likely have the 8087 in the wrong way into the MB.

It may sound foolish, but I also learnt this a while back when I too couldn't not see my drives on a Supermicro MB with an mini-sas port (only sata).

On a side note. I know you went with Promox. It's been a while since I've used it as well but I remember two (2) years ago when I was testing Freenas on Proxmox there was an issue with smart data being pass through to Freenas (known failed drive would not show smart warnings in Promox). This is important for drive monitoring under Freenas for knowing likely drive failure.

In this regard, FreeNAS is, however, certified to work on ESXI by ixsystems. As a result, I don't run TrueNAS on anything other than ESXI. I don't know if the issue with Promox has now been fixed (maybe someone else can advise).

You warned me about Proxmox very early on in this thread and I tried to research this. Nearly all threads about Proxmox and FreeNAS are years old. Threads dated within the last year are all about people testing or playing with it, but nobody will come out and say they are running TrueNAS/FreeNAS on Proxmox in production.

The deciding factor for me was that I can not download ESXi from vmware. I registered, I'm on the download page, and clicking "Manually Download" button does nothing. This happened a week ago and I verified that it is still the case.

After RedHat canned CentOS and Google keeps pulling its free products, I don't have a lot of faith that VMWare won't do the same with ESXi.

I can still be persuaded. I don't have anything really invested in Proxmox other than installing and booting from it on this new server. I won't be installing TrueNAS until all drives are installed - probably Saturday morning.

 

[Rand__]

You can run a trial of any of the products (eg horizon) and then should have access to all products of that suite and its dependencies which include ESXi and vCenter

 

[itronin]

You warned me about Proxmox very early on in this thread and I tried to research this. Nearly all threads about Proxmox and FreeNAS are years old. Threads dated within the last year are all about people testing or playing with it, but nobody will come out and say they are running TrueNAS/FreeNAS on Proxmox in production.

The deciding factor for me was that I can not download ESXi from vmware. I registered, I'm on the download page, and clicking "Manually Download" button does nothing. This happened a week ago and I verified that it is still the case.

After RedHat canned CentOS and Google keeps pulling its free products, I don't have a lot of faith that VMWare won't do the same with ESXi.

I can still be persuaded. I don't have anything really invested in Proxmox other than installing and booting from it on this new server. I won't be installing TrueNAS until all drives are installed - probably Saturday morning.

Not to diverge but there is significant market pressure forcing vmware to have this "free" version of ESXI. I could be wrong but IMO its not likely to go away without those market pressures changing.

If you have issues with PM keep in mind you do have an alternative and I'm pretty sure you could get assistance getting that download and installing it.

 

[rskoss]

Not to diverge but there is significant market pressure forcing vmware to have this "free" version of ESXI. I could be wrong but IMO its not likely to go away without those market pressures changing.

If you have issues with PM keep in mind you do have an alternative and I'm pretty sure you could assistance getting that download and installing it.

I’ll dig into VMware more. You guys have been looking out for me all through this project and you all seem to think VMware is the way to go. It helps that you all use it so if I have issues...

 

[Markess]

Oh man, I wake up here in California and every day it seems like you guys had a party while I was sleeping

These are the cables: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018YHS8BS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The cable appears to be able to be inserted in either direction on the motherboard. The only locking mechanism if you want to call it that is the clip that clips to the connector housing.

I've had good luck with the cable matters and cable creations "low cost" SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 cables.

When I click on the link for the cable, Amazon helpfully reminds me that I've been buying them. In fact, I have four of those in one of my chassis right now and they've been working well for me.

I'm not familiar with your chassis and don't know what you've got for power supply. But, if your drives don't settle down and stay "visible", you may want to try testing them with the SATA data cable connected to them directly. You'd need a spare SATA power plug from the power supply of course and I don't know if you have one.

For ESXi download. Here's how I get there: After logging in, I select "Downloads" from the horizontal menu bar. From there, I select:

"Free Product Downloads"-->"Vsphere Hypervisor"---> click "Register" in the product description field--> Complete the registration page (you need to register for each free product, even version changes)--->following registration it takes you back to the "Vsphere Hypervisor" page you just left, but now your downloads will appear at the bottom of the page for "manual download".

Since I hadn't tried Version 7.0, I just did it myself to make sure it still works .

I mention this because if you enter the menu system via "Products" instead of "Downloads" on the menu bar you can't easily get to download the free product you want (at least I can't) on a free account. The way I describe, you can just get into the system to download free ESXi without checking out trial software. At least that works for me.

 

[zack$]

@Markess You are probably gonna save a lot of lost souls looking for the esxi download with your explanation.

But on the ESXI issue, I'd be surprised if the evaluation option goes away. Almost everyone offers the hypervisor for free and gets you caught into all the branding (which you pay dearly for).

Given VMware's William Lam "homelab" blog, I feel pretty good with ESXI being available for this purpose: VMware Community Homelabs Project

Now, I am no supporter of ESXI dropping support for "last than new" hardware. But there are always pro and cons to everything. For me though, I only run TrueNAS VMs on ESXI.

 

[rskoss]

For ESXi download. Here's how I get there: After logging in, I select "Downloads" from the horizontal menu bar. From there, I select:

"Free Product Downloads"-->"Vsphere Hypervisor"---> click "Register" in the product description field--> Complete the registration page (you need to register for each free product, even version changes)--->following registration it takes you back to the "Vsphere Hypervisor" page you just left, but now your downloads will appear at the bottom of the page for "manual download".

Since I hadn't tried Version 7.0, I just did it myself to make sure it still works .

I mention this because if you enter the menu system via "Products" instead of "Downloads" on the menu bar you can't easily get to download the free product you want (at least I can't) on a free account. The way I describe, you can just get into the system to download free ESXi without checking out trial software. At least that works for me.

I just went through all of that AGAIN. Ended up on the Product Evaluation Center for VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 1c page. Is this where I want to be? It says my evaluation is now available and will expire on March 15.

And when I click on "Manually Download", NOTHING HAPPENS.

 

[Rand__]

Cookies? Different browser?

 

[rskoss]

Cookies? Different browser?

The above was with Firefox. I tried Safari and every other page gave an error while loading and had to be refreshed. Helluva site VMware runs.

I’ll try Chrome. Standby.

 

[Rand__]

I think I had issues with FF too. Have not dled anything in a while but I think I remember frustration

 

[Markess]

I just went through all of that AGAIN. Ended up on the Product Evaluation Center for VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 1c page. Is this where I want to be? It says my evaluation is now available and will expire on March 15.

If you're getting a warning about expiration, you're probably in the wrong place.

For plain old vanilla ESXi free for a single device, you need "VMware vSphere Hypervisor 7.0" and if you got to it via the free products page, you'll have a lifetime licence code.

The URL should be something like this: Download VMware vSphere Hypervisor for Free

 

[Markess]

Oh heck @rskoss ...I think if you click that link above, it will take you to the page you need directly, and you can just log in in the box on the right hand side! Then "register" and download. Try it!