Freenas Upgrade

I’ve been running a Freenas server for sometime.  The configuration was as follows:

• VIA EPIA 533MHz MB
• 256 MB Ram
• Sil 3112 4-Port SATA
• 4 x 500 GB HD

I upgraded to the following configuration:

• ASRock P965-GM w/E4300
• 2 GB Ram
• Sil 3112 4-Port SATA
• 4 x 500 GB HD
• 2 x 1 TB HD

The upgrade process wasn’t exactly straight forward but not too complicated, here’s what I did:

1. Take a few screen shots of information related to the Disks and RAID array
2. Take a backup of the Freenas configuration
3. Shut down the original Freenas server.
4. Pull the IDE to CF adapter w/512 MB flash card
5. Install IDE to CF adapter w/512 MB flash card in target system
6. Install the latest verion of Freenas 0.7 (Sadly rumoured to be the final version)
7. Boot, assign IP address, login to management interface, upload configuration from step 2
8. Shutdown
9. Install the Sil3112 Card & 4 x 500 GB drives, boot, RAID is detected but disk management fails to see drives correctly, simply remove and re-add the drives in disk management
10. Shutdown
11. Install the 2 x 1 TB drives, boot
12. Disk Mgt, add drives, format them software RAID, create RAID 1, Format RAID 1, Mount RAID 1
13. Test / Benchmark

The end result is a much better performing NAS that offers better than 100 Mbit performance but isn’t going to break and speed records.  Overall the process was fairly simple and were completed in just over an hour.