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What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

There should be a link to this article or the content should be included in the storage section of the TrueNAS doc site.

This was exactly what I was looking for. I am migrating from SATA based workstations to a storage bridge bus (SBB) based Supermicro 6036ST-6LR two node system. The SAS2008 based card is in IR mode but running older (11.0) firmware. I didn't want to migrate to the IT firmware unless required because the RAID HBA is packaged onto the motherboard and has proprietary connections to the midplane. Looks like I just need to upgrade the firmware to 20.00.07.

What brought me here? I see all of the disks in `camcontrol devlist`, I get unique serial numbers when enumerating them with `camcontrol inquiry <disk> -S`. I can add disks to ZFS vdev's in FreeBSD 13.0, but TrueNAS 13-U3 doesn't show any available disks. I was nearly confident I was going to have to go to IT firmware to get FreeNAS to show them as available, and I am unsure if I will be able to use the (Supermicro noted as required RAID functionality) without IR firmware when sharing access between the two nodes to the same storage with RSF-1-HA. It now looks like I just need FW 20.0 on the

I will follow up with edits for any issues I run into... just wanted to share my appreciation for this article.
jgreco
jgreco
The TrueNAS developers have always been resistant to draw lines in the sand for what hardware can be used with TrueNAS. They aren't tasked with the job of day-to-day support, which is unfortunate. It leaves us here in the forum holding the bag, so to speak. I'm more interested in providing pragmatic documentation on how things work and what's expected to work, because I'm pointing users at my resources multiple times per day.

While I cannot promise any particular result, I would note that historically, it's been fine to use true LSI IR firmware -- not vendor hacked-up firmware -- in place of the IT code. I have machines as recent as TrueNAS 12 running IR cards and they're fine. I would just try running IR fw 20.00.07.00 and see if that works out.
Very descriptive and helpful.
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