3Ware Raid Support

[krogerssolar]

Hi is the 3ware 9750-4i and the 3ware9750-81 support by freenas I'm specing hardware for a backup system and before money is spent on the raid card i wont to know that it will work I'm going to use 4 1tb or 2tb drive or 8 1tb or 2tb drive depending on prices of the hardware i use i just want to know that is will see the raid6 volume without any issues.

 

[jgreco]

3ware is more or less a legacy product line for LSI.

Since the LSI-based IBM M1015 (inexpensively available on eBay) or other 2008-based controllers are readily available and known to work extremely well with FreeNAS, you might want to consider that.

 

[krogerssolar]

Thanks jgreco do you know of a LSI one that has Raid 6 that is compatible.

 

[survive]

Hi krogerssolar,

Have you bought the hardware yet? If not, and you want to use ZFS, forget about paying for a proper hardware RAID card. Get a simple HBA like jgreco suggested and load the box up with more RAM instead.

If you plan on using 4 drives you can forget buying a controller at all and just use the on-board SATA ports.

-Will

 

[krogerssolar]

No hardware yet there will be 6 drives in the setup and I trust hardware raids over software never had an issue with a hardware raid.

 

[survive]

Hi krogerssolar,

Not looking to argue, personally I don't really care if you spend a couple of hundred bucks more than you need to, but if you use a hardware RAID card with ZFS you will wind up losing some really compelling features...most notably the ability do correct for silent "bit rot".

For what it's worth most of the guys that you will wind up turning to for help (the ones who know what they are doing with FreeNAS) are going to tell you that ZFS with HBA connected storage beats ZFS on hardware RAID.

-Will

 

[cyberjock]

For what it's worth most of the guys that you will wind up turning to for help (the ones who know what they are doing with FreeNAS) are going to tell you that ZFS with HBA connected storage beats ZFS on hardware RAID.

+1Bajillion