Which compact flash cards are best to use with FreeNAS?

[ttblum]

Hello,

I plan to run FreeNAS on a compact flash card installed in a SuperMicro motherboard.

Which kinds of compact flash cards tend to work the best? It seems like a lot of manufactures don't publish whether they use NAND vs. SLC, etc.

 

[Z300M]

Hello,

I plan to run FreeNAS on a compact flash card installed in a SuperMicro motherboard.

Which kinds of compact flash cards tend to work the best? It seems like a lot of manufactures don't publish whether they use NAND vs. SLC, etc.

I'm using a Transcend CF card at present, but the most common recommendation is to use a USB flash drive. The SanDisk Cruzer Fit flash drives are amazingly small.

 

[ttblum]

Yes, that's a good point, I'm not even sure if it's better to use a USB drive or a compact flash. The 'Hardware Recommendations' page makes USB drives sound like a second choice:
"If you don't have compact flash, you can instead use a USB thumb drive that is dedicated to the running image and which stays inserted in the USB slot."

 

[vlad1966]

If I use USB stick, is it better to use USB 3.0 or 2.0 or does it really matter as far as speed?

Thanks

 

[cyberjock]

If I use USB stick, is it better to use USB 3.0 or 2.0 or does it really matter as far as speed?

Thanks

Doesn't matter.

Edit: Actually, its worse than that.

USB 3 support is currently disabled because it's very unreliable and was causing many systems to be unbootable. I'd buy USB2 and never look back. ;)

 

[joelmusicman]

OTOH, the vast majority of USB sticks have abysmal 4kb write performance (less than 2MB/s even for USB3 models), which I *think* would be quite important metric for FreeNAS due to changing config files, etc.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3.0-thumb-drive-review,3477-3.html

The only exception is the Sandisk Extreme. Yes, it might be overkill, but I bet it would improve responsiveness for the GUI, even if it's stuck with USB2.

 

[cyberjock]

joelmusicman,

You are correct. But let's look at this relatively speaking.

Your config file is a whole 200kb or so. That's it. And once you've setup FreeNAS, if you've done your job and you set up everything properly, you should rarely(if ever) need to log into it again. I've used both USB sticks and full fledged SSDs. There's 1 or 2 places where it matters, tunables and sysctls. I've seen it take 2-3 minutes when deleting them(adding them takes no time at all). But, neither tunables nor sysctls are things you should be playing with as a course of business, so that argument is somewhat mute.

Also, the USB stick is mounted readonly, with the exception of the small slice for your config file. So you don't have to worry about any other writes being slow causing poor server performance. Also most if the USB stick is cached in RAM, so there's little penalty if you have to read stuff from the USB stick as it's probably already in RAM.

As for bootup, I've taken a very fast USB3 drive and a slow-ish USB2 drive and booted them on the same hardware with the same configuration. Total bootup time difference was less than 5 seconds. An SSD was only a few seconds faster than the faster USB3 drive. So when it comes down to it, speed of the USB stick really isn't that important. What is important is to make sure you use a name brand stick that is at least 4GB.

 

[joelmusicman]

That's really helpful. I don't have anything else to compare to, but the GUI on my machine has seemed "slow" to me.

You just saved me from spending "stupid" money instead of getting more RAM first. Though I'm finding that now that my machine setup is complete, I'm not in the GUI as much, mostly just for jails setup now.

 

[cyberjock]

It has felt a bit sluggish on my side too, and my test machine is an SSD. I think the issue is less about either the server or client/browser being slow and is just the number of things that download concurrently. It takes time to establish all of those connections, then download and process it all....

 

[ttblum]

So, USB is a better option these days than compact flash?

My Supermicro X7DBN motherboard has an ATA slot marked 'Compact Flash Only', with a tiny 3-pin power connecter (about 3 mm wide) on the motherboard next to it labeled 'Compact Flash Power'. The instructions say to hook up the power connector if you want to use compact flash, but I'm not sure where I would find such a teeny tiny 3-pin power connector.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The one thing that really gets impacted by lousy write performance on a USB flash drive is the database update when you upgrade FreeNAS. A bad/slow USB (or one plugged into a USB 1.1 port, shudder) can mean a 30min+ hang and thinking "is it ok? is it ok?" vs. upgrade, restarting, upgradingdatabanevermindalldonerebootingagain, and you're live within five minutes.

 

[cyberjock]

The one thing that really gets impacted by lousy write performance on a USB flash drive is the database update when you upgrade FreeNAS. A bad/slow USB (or one plugged into a USB 1.1 port, shudder) can mean a 30min+ hang and thinking "is it ok? is it ok?" vs. upgrade, restarting, upgradingdatabanevermindalldonerebootingagain, and you're live within five minutes.

Every update I've ever done I give no more than 15 minutes before I give worry. Because of the time to upgrade, after I click the "upload" button for the firmware I set a stopwatch for 15 minutes and I don't even try to use the server before then. Every time, without fail, 15 minutes later my shares are working again. :)

I think 30 minutes is a bit much unless you are using a REALLY REALLY crappy USB stick. The ones I use (Corsair Voyager 8GB) I bought because they were cheap(less than $10).

 

[HoneyBadger]

I think 30 minutes is a bit much unless you are using a REALLY REALLY crappy USB stick. The ones I use (Corsair Voyager 8GB) I bought because they were cheap(less than $10).

Yes, but we all know how well people read hardware recommendation lists ... *cough* hay guyz do i rly need dat much ECC rams? *cough*

 

[ttblum]

FYI, in case it helps anybody, the slot on my Supermicro motherboard labeled 'Compact Flash' was actually for putting in a DOM module, which of course come with a power cords/adapters. I thought it literally meant compact flash card, duh...