Napp-it - USB drive shows as removed

I am booting from USB for the Omni OS and Nappit installation. As per recommendations I purchased 2 devices in a bid to mirror the Rpool. Yet Napp-it reports the second USB device as removed.

c4t0d0 - - removed 33.1 GB - PNY USB 3.0 FD

I am wondering if this has anything to do with the motherboard which is a Supermicro X9SRL-F.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

thanks

TCM

There are some users with the same problem that USB sticks are not detected properly by the OS. I have no solution for that.

What I would do:
- Use a single stick and replicate this on changes to the other, use that only on problems

Beside that, I would prefer DOM sticks instead of USB sticks whenever possible
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm

_Gea said:

There are some users with the same problem that USB sticks are not detected properly by the OS. I have no solution for that.

What I would do:
- Use a single stick and replicate this on changes to the other, use that only on problems

Beside that, I would prefer DOM sticks instead of USB sticks whenever possible
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm

Click to expand...

this thread make me ,remembering when we discussed RAID(1) OS on 2 USB stick/key that I said "no"
...
SM DOM actually sata ssd minime(cute version).

- USB sticks are ok but often not very reliable, therefor a raid 1 with two sticks is an option
- USB is not as trouble free as Sata/AHCI in general

Dom sticks are similar in handling like USB sticks but with less troubles.
If you like USB boot, a cold spare stick that you can use on problems is the best
option if mirroring does not work (or always a good additional option)

_Gea said:

- USB sticks are ok but often not very reliable, therefor a raid 1 with two sticks is an option
- USB is not as trouble free as Sata/AHCI in general

Dom sticks are similar in handling like USB sticks but with less troubles.
If you like USB boot, a cold spare stick that you can use on problems is the best
option if mirroring does not work (or always a good additional option)

Click to expand...

like an ads:
USB is ok but do your own risk,
when you got troubles, bang your head

DOM is real SSD, not trouble at all..
does ever been hit trouble with ssd?

What do you espect?

USB boot with a ZFS mirror is not a main concern of Illumos, OI, Oracle or anyone else.
On other ZFS options, this is not even a possibility.

It works on some configs, not on others.
The suggestion of DOMs are not that DOMs are real SSD, this is the case with some USB sticks
as well. The difference is that they use Sata not USB.

Thanks for your replies.

We tried to move away from USB onto Intel S3500 boot drives. The way we were hoping to do this was to put them in a mirror with the USB device, remove the usb device and then mirror the second s3500 but I think the USB device is in 512bytes and the S3500 is 4Kb so it would not complete.

We would like to still go ahead with this so if there is anyway to achieve this the knowledge would be gratefully received.

_Gea said:

What do you espect?

USB boot with a ZFS mirror is not a main concern of Illumos, OI, Oracle or anyone else.
On other ZFS options, this is not even a possibility.

It works on some configs, not on others.
The suggestion of DOMs are not that DOMs are real SSD, this is the case with some USB sticks
as well. The difference is that they use Sata not USB.

Click to expand...

Tell the truth...

USB is good for reading and loading to the ram or ramdisk

Would you tell the truth?

Even on usb3.. Making read write quickly.. Still cause identical issue.

Just use sata native. Regardless marketing as dom or ssd

_gea

Do you think that DOM sticks is the solution? are they 512Bytes rather than 4K. The problem I have is I want to mirror onto a new drive then add a second drive to mirror the boot devices. It is not practical to remove the boot device every time I make a config change to image to another cold boot device.

Any help would be gratefully received?

thanks

TCM

cantalup said:

Tell the truth...

USB is good for reading and loading to the ram or ramdisk

Would you tell the truth?

Even on usb3.. Making read write quickly.. Still cause identical issue.

Just use sata native. Regardless marketing as dom or ssd

Click to expand...

Well that's exactly what napp-it does, there is very little writing to the stick going on.

TCMY95 said:

_gea

Do you think that DOM sticks is the solution? are they 512Bytes rather than 4K. The problem I have is I want to mirror onto a new drive then add a second drive to mirror the boot devices. It is not practical to remove the boot device every time I make a config change to image to another cold boot device.

Any help would be gratefully received?

thanks

TCM

Click to expand...

Depends on the problem.
Usually you use one or two Sata disks in case of a mirror. This sort of a mirror is mainly to improve availabilty in case of a bootdisk failure.

If you want to remove disks as a bootable cold spare disk, you can use zpool split
http://thegeekdiary.com/how-to-use-zpool-split-to-split-rpool-in-solaris-11-x86x64/
I have not done but this seems quite complicated. Hot remove a disk and resilver with a new disk would be another option.

Mirror an USB stick with an Sata disk: have not tried myself, i doubt you will get a bootable result even if it works.

You may also use hardware raid-1 enclosures like http://www.raidon.com.tw/RAIDON2013/RAIDON2014/mr2020-2s-s2r.html
or http://www.raidon.com.tw/RAIDON2013/RAIDON2014/ir2770.html
This sort of raid is not as good as ZFS raid but you can use it to create a mirror that you can hot remove. This is what I do on some machines.

Last option if you can power down the server for half an hour,
use Clonezilla from an USB stick to create/restore boot-images. Clonezilla can work with disks and SMB or NFS shares

USB sticks are mainly an option if your backplane lacks disk bays ex with an HP Microserver or you do not want to use them..
In such a case, good Sata DOMs are an option as they use Sata (more trouble free) and they are often more reliable than average USB sticks.
USB sticks are a good option, if you like an external, cloneable or cheap bootoption for whatever reason.

Thanks Gea, plenty to go at there. I appreciate you taking the time to come back to me.

I thought the thread was going to get hijacked for a moment then

Am I understanding you correct - Can I use clonezilla to clone the USB sticks to a SATA drive and end up with a bootable system?

No, you can only backup and restore a bootdisk for the same controller port
as Grub is sensitive to your boot controller and disk.
You may follow some Grub repair howtos (installgrub etc) but I have never tried.

Mostly a reinstall is faster (as long as you use a basic storage or with a straight forward howto setup)
than any repair option.