4TB disks attached to 3ware 9550SE

[David Febo]

Do you want me to post devlist in JBOD? The only reason I’m doing this is because I read posts on the forum about this but no evidence is shown with factual data. By the way SMART reports through FreeNas from this card works because one of the disks has bad sectors (used on purpose) and FreeNas reports them correctly. I read somewhere that SMART does not work on this card with FreeNas. Maybe the v.9.10 fixed some of the issues.

 

[jgreco]

No, I'm really not interested. The card functions in what is basically a hardware RAID mode. We already knew that. The card's firmware is presenting an emulated disk to the host that happens to be a direct mapping of the drive, but it is still in the data path and providing its own representation.

What happens when a disk experiences an error? What happens when there's an unexpected interaction like a hot swap event? There are numerous questions, including unforeseen ones, whose answers we do not know.

You want "factual data"? What the hell is that? You expect someone else to prove that using an untested controller is bad? It doesn't work like that. The way it works is that we periodically see people wander on in here, with various janky hardware configurations, complaining that they're unable to boot their NAS because "something happened." Then we look at it, find out that there's some sort of failure of the underlying disks that got hidden from ZFS because of the controller, and then we all go "awwww you lost redundancy and now your pool is toast."

"But I want factual data" is the cry of someone who is intent on using their potentially risky hardware unless someone can come up with an example to demonstrate that it is pointing a gun at your foot and pulling the trigger. It doesn't work that way. We work based on the things we know to work swimmingly well. For example, current Intel SATA ports and 6Gbps LSI ports both have a billion hours of problem-free operation under their belts with FreeNAS with a huge base of installed users. We know these things work very well.

We *assume* you come to FreeNAS because you want your data protected securely. If that's an invalid assumption, by all means, go off and do whatever you want.

 

[David Febo]

Just trying to support the forum with more information that might help someone new but if that offends you jgreco I apologize. I thought that what the forum was about. I thought wrong my bad.

 

[jgreco]

Just trying to support the forum with more information that might help someone new

I'm sure you believe that, but the operative word there is "help". It doesn't. "Help," that is.

but if that offends you jgreco I apologize.

It doesn't offend me. It's just a fact. We've seen so many people do things that they feel "are helpful" or "are useful" and then it turns and bites them. The basic idea around here is that we believe that if you've come to ZFS, it means you want your data stored, safely, securely, reliably. You don't get that with every single possible bit of hardware. Some, like Realtek ethernets, are merely infuriating because they severely impact performance. Others, like bad controllers, actually place your data at risk.

I thought that what the forum was about. I thought wrong my bad.

The goal around here is to guide users towards hardware that's known to work well, and also to guide them away from hardware that's been problematic, as with the 3Ware controllers. We've got some 9550's in stock, they've been sitting around useless for a bunch of years because they're just not suitable for much of anything anymore. They're ten year old crap-grade controllers at this point.

So, no, talking about crap grade controllers that are known to be problematic, and known to have poor driver support isn't "help." Unless your concept of "help" is helping someone who doesn't know any better to put their data at risk. We kinda frown on that.