I haven’t posted about my media server and file server in a long time, which is an indication of just how out of date the current software is. In truth, it has been running fine, so there was little reason to upgrade. And the last time I tried a major update, everything crashed and had to be rebuilt.
Hopefully, by the time this posts, the current update will be completed successfully. I am upgrading from v11.2u6 (released mid-2019) to the latest v11.3u2 (released early April 2020). For our system, this is mainly a compatibility update – I still don’t have any major issues. But I wanted to take advantage of the various updates and bug fixes, and the new enhancements.
In general, this process is pretty painless, though the web-based upgrade process continues to fail for me. Instead I am seeming to prefer the ISO based update – with a USB drive and a direct update. Not only is the update faster (no intermediate steps are needed), but I then have recovery media if the update goes very badly.
Of course, before any update, be sure to make and secure a backup of the FreeNAS configuration, so that everything can go back to the original state if needed.
