Hi Padre, In episode 78 (FreeNas) you mentioned that it is preferable to install the FreeNas OS...

[G+_Frédéric C]

Hi Padre, 

In episode 78 (FreeNas) you mentioned that it is preferable to install the FreeNas OS on a flash usb drive for many reasons. 

 

I'm about to build a virtualized server based on VMWare and it also seems to be a common practice to install the hypervisor on a flash usb drive. 

 

My worry is, what happens if the usb flash drive fails ? There is technically no backup.

 

What are your thoughts on that ??

[G+_Mike Marien (x12Mike)]

I've used SD cards for ESX 4/5 on Dell servers for years and not had any issues.  As the VM's are stored on your datastores, you shouldn't loose that data if the USB stick dies.  

 

What I would suggest tho, is to install ESX on the USB stick.  Then setup a base VM just to have.  Then power down the whole system and clone the USB stick, if the second stick boots, and your VM's also startup fine, that is your basic poor-mans backup.

 

Full disclosure, I've never tried this route, but it's what I'd try if I was setting up a USB or SD bootable ESX host at home...

[G+_Frédéric C]

Thank's Mike !

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

The wonderful thing about Flash memory devices is that they really only "use up" their lifespan when writing. In an OS like FreeNAS which almost never writes to the drive, they can be FAR more stable than rotating media.

[G+_Frédéric C]

Interesting fact . Thanks !

[G+_John Mink]

Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ apart from having a bunch of wasted space, I'm still not seeing a benefit of going with USB drive.

 

Why not go with a HDD and move the OS around as it fails?  Heck, why not partition the drive up and create a RAID 1 with a as many partitions as you can fit?

 

What am I missing, apart from how much of a pain it is to make a bootable RAID?

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

In a FreeNAS setup the RAID array is not bootable... at all... ever.

 

The drive that the OS is on can ONLY be used for the OS. That's the way it's mounted. It can't be partitioned, and any unused space will be unavailable.

 

More importantly, you NEVER want your OS to be on one of the RAID drives. That's just building in a single point of failure. (Which is why most modern NAS OS won't even allow you to try it.)

 

AND... as I mentioned, a flash drive will last a lot longer than any rotating media... especially in a 24x7 application like a NAS RAID array.

[G+_Cole Brodine]

Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ - I've never tried this, but could you take out the USB drive while the FreeNAS box was shutdown, put it in another PC and make an image of it?  That might give somebody some comfort of having a "backup" of the USB stick.  You could put the image on another stick if it failed.  As long as your settings and configuration were the same, would you be okay?