Bare metal or proxmox?

[szymon1051]

I have a Fujitsu Siemens RX300 server, all disks are on one controller.
What is better for bare metal - installing truenas or maybe proxmox and virtual with truenas?
Proxmox is the only problem that I won't be able to passtruth controller, because all disks together with proxmox are on one controller.
I'm considering proxmox because the server has relatively high power for a NAS and could be used for something else.
I haven't used virtual machines on truenas and I don't know if they work well.

 

[chuck32]

Resource - "Absolutely must virtualize TrueNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.

[---- 2024/01/16: Still relevant. Virtualization really doesn't change much. Updates made as appropriate. ----] [---- 2018/02/27: This is still as relevant as ever. As PCIe-Passthru has matured, fewer problems are reported. I've updated some...

www.truenas.com

Can you share the specs of your specific server?

I'm using scale and overall I am pretty content with the virtualization. Personally I'd prefer a bare metal installation.

 

[szymon1051]

Server spec 2x E5-2660, 32GB RAM. 12 slot 2,5 HDD.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

RX300 S-what exactly? And what is this controller? Fujitsu (Siemens) have been notoriously using LSI chipsets but shipping proprietary firmware that cannot be cross flashed to IT mode. If this is a RAID controller you cannot use the system for TrueNAS.

 

[szymon1051]

I change to Fujitsu D2607-A21 they have JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) mode to passtruth to system.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

So called JBOD mode does not qualify. Only IT mode firmware does.

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

This is relevant to FreeNAS and TrueNAS CORE. Some parts of it might also be relevant to Scale, but I don't really know how reliable the Linux drivers are. 1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with...

www.truenas.com

 

[szymon1051]

How check it?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If this controller firmware offers a choice of RAID or JBOD mode it will not work with TrueNAS. And if you manually flashed it to IT firmware, you should know, right? And to my knowledge Fujitsu-Siemens controllers cannot be flashed with stock LSI firmware so you probably did not.

So better get a different controller and disable the on-board one.

 

[szymon1051]

I bought the second one with JBOD because I wanted to have disks directly visible in proxmox and not virtual ones.
I have two RAID cards.
I didn't flash them, I just bought them.
Is there any way I can check if they have this HBA mode?


I also have a connector on the motherboard, I think it's SFF-8087, which will support probably 6 drives.
Is this HBA on the motherboard?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If they have a menu that lets you chose RAID or JBOD they are definitely not HBA. HBA is not a mode. It's a specific type of firmware that completely eliminates all RAID functions. But if they are separate cards you can probably flash them. Start with the link I posted.

If the on-board controller can be set to "AHCI" in the BIOS setup tool it will probably be ok.