NAS Upgrade

As mentioned in my previous post I had been running my NAS for quite some time before I actually got around to writing about it.

In that time it has changed somewhat significantly.

The biggest change is that I have actually completely replaced the HP N40L with a new HP Gen8 Microserver. My reasoning behind this was partially due to the addition of iLo in the Gen8 but was mainly due to the fact that I was able to pick one up very cheaply with cashback.

The migration to the Gen8 was incredibly straightforward.

In theory it would be best to export the pool and config, re-install FreeNAS on the Gen8 and then reimport the pool and config. However, I found that after setting the onboard controller to AHCI and transplanting my existing RAM, disks and USB drive into the Gen8 I was simply able to boot up into FreeNAS.

Everything appeared to work out of the box and I have yet to find any issues with doing this.

The one issue I did encounter with the Gen8 was excessive noise caused by the fan speed which was significantly higher than it needed to be.

After some reading I found that this is a known issue with the Gen8 Microserver and occurs when the onboard RAID controller is not in use.

To resolve this I updated the firmware on the Gen8. This was done by downloading the HP Proliant Service pack, using iLo to mount the iso as a disk drive and booting from it. Personally I used the interactive mode to manually select the firmware updates I wanted but the service pack does offer a fully automated option.

I have now been running FreeNAS on the Gen8 Microserver for several months with no issues and have been very happy with the upgrade. What has surprised me however, is how quickly my pool has been filling up. I am currently in the process of testing a potential expansion solution which will certainly merit a blog post.