Advice for a re-newbie
-
Gentlefolk,
I am returning to BSD. It has been a wee while since I set up and administered BSD systems, but I did put in quite a few years before I gave up. I am definitely looking forward to getting off Linux. My first use case is to replace our server, a 15 year old Mac Mini that once ran OSX Server and then Debian.
Rather than make an ill-informed choice and then pester everyone with frustrating questions, I am hoping to solicit a bit of advice. I am hoping to get a used server and use jails to run various services.
Would a used Dell R640 with the H730p hardware raid card and a 2xSFP+ 10G card be an easy FreeBSD install? My sense from looking at posts elsewhere is that many people run FreeBSD on these, but I might be about to make a Well Known Mistake. It will be inside our router and firewall, so I'm not so worried about a hardened install.
Anything from raucous laughter followed by informative snorts through to gentle hints gratefully appreciated...
Many thanks!
---WBTD.
-
More than likely it would be a very easy install. I'm running a Dell R720xd in my house, and it handles FreeBSD just fine.
Just make sure the card supports passthrough/JBOD/HBA mode for the disks. ZFS is much happier when it can control the disks directly.
-
Which Mac mini server version? I’m running a Mac mini late 2012. A couple of years ago I bought 2x8TB SSDs and a doubler (owc) and installed them in the mini. It currently has v15 on it and a dozen jails including PostgreSQL, forgejo source control, my bespoke home automation server, a monitoring stack (grafana, Prometheus, Loki, alloy), samba server (time
Machine), package cache and local package server, and my blog builder. It’s mostly me on this thing, but the cpu hardly breaks a sweat. It’s an i7 with 16GB memory. Maybe you don’t need any new hardware? -
Which Mac mini server version? I’m running a Mac mini late 2012. A couple of years ago I bought 2x8TB SSDs and a doubler (owc) and installed them in the mini. It currently has v15 on it and a dozen jails including PostgreSQL, forgejo source control, my bespoke home automation server, a monitoring stack (grafana, Prometheus, Loki, alloy), samba server (time
Machine), package cache and local package server, and my blog builder. It’s mostly me on this thing, but the cpu hardly breaks a sweat. It’s an i7 with 16GB memory. Maybe you don’t need any new hardware?@nuintari thank you for the reassurance and the advice on disk controllers. I was indeed about to wander off in the wrong direction.
@codeedog Hmmm. That's comparable to mine.
Shifting all the services across to BSD would mean offloading them onto some other machine in the interim, but there are laptops around. This particular Mini (6.2, i7 3615QM) came with 2 HDD anyway.
So this is very useful advice. I will ponder, and regardless of what happens, I will reincarnate this machine under BSD.
My primary reason for shifting hardware was to get away from the inflexible hardware configuration - I'm hoping to build a fast backbone in the house and put a 10G interface on the server. As for disks, I've got a big external JBOD with various bits of storage including software raid across 3 disks, and the hardware interface is a bottleneck. As I remember, the internal h/w interface for the Mac Mini SSDs was nonstandard and they were quite dear, which is why I went for an external enclosure even though it was slower. The R640 would let me put all the storage inside on a faster bus.
We run Nextcloud and samba, with a large library of images and ebooks and things (collections of digitised manuscripts, maps, etc - it's a lot of disk space!) and I'd like to be able to serve that faster to the desktop. We'd also be running Koha and backup services. As far as I understand, Nextcloud can be run under a BSD jail just fine, but Koha will require a Debian jail.
Thanks again!
-
More than likely it would be a very easy install. I'm running a Dell R720xd in my house, and it handles FreeBSD just fine.
Just make sure the card supports passthrough/JBOD/HBA mode for the disks. ZFS is much happier when it can control the disks directly.
-
I apparently found your original post on Mastodon first:
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login