Big FreeNAS Setup, Raid hardware and general advice required.

[Riccardo Deiana]

Hi All,

I’m looking to change the OS on my current production storage server from Open-e 7 to possibly freeNAS or maybe Ubuntu server with ZFS. After doing my research and reading forums and beginners guides, im pretty sure free NAS will be able to do everything I require, but I’m a little worried about raid issues I may have.

Server Hardware
Supermicro 4U Chassis with 1280w High Efficiency Redundant PSU
Supermicro Intel E5-2600 Series DP Motherboard
2x Intel 2.0GHz Six-Core Xeon E5-2620 CPU’s
128GB Supermicro DDR3 ECC-Registered 1600MHz memory
2x 250GB Enterprise Class 7200RPM SATA 2.5” HDD’s (Internally Mounted for O/S)
No HDD’s
Open-E VSS 7 Unlimited License including Basic Support – Other support options available
1x E10G42BTDA – Intel X520-DA2 Network Adapter

Intel c602 chipset sata storage controller (no used)

Raid card 1
LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2108
36 x4TB WD4000FYYZ internal drives
Using HBA side of card I also have a Supermicro JBOD with 24 x 2TB WD drives connected

Raid Card 2
LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e
Supermicro JBOD with 45 x 4TB WD4000FYYZ

Question 1: if I was to change my raid cards, which ones would be best suited and work with freenas, a card that can support a JBOD with 45 drives and an internal card which can support 36 drives?
I understand that the Intel RAID Controller Card 6G SAS PCI-E x8 8 internal ports (RS2WC080) and IBM ServeRAID M1015 after crossflash them to IT mode, will work but don’t they just support only 16 hard drives??

Question 2: can I crossflash my existing cards for them to work with the amount of drives I’m talking about or do I crossflash a cheaper card for the same effect?

The reason I’m changing OS is because Open-e is unable to resize/add space to a NAS share, without reformatting and deleting the data. The network is not overly complicated, mostly MAC clients (7) and a few Linux clients (3).

Question 3: I will be adding more Jbods to this system in the future, probably 45 bay with 4TB or 6TB hard disks. Is Freenas scalable/reliable enough for this kind of setup, so long as I have enough ram (ECC), processing power and use raid Z2. I will setup reporting and we have spare drives for swap out. Any more advice would be appreciated.

I have a 2nd server with more storage as a backup (@ warehouse across the road) using rsync to copy data.


Thanks in advance for your help

 

[Ericloewe]

If your cards are based on LSI 2008 controllers, crossflash them to IT mode. In IT mode (IT mode allows for more drives than IR, besides not having the unwanted RAID stuff), with expanders, they'll support at least one expander's worth of drives (28 drives). The LSI 2008/2308 claim support for up to 256 devices. I'm not sure if the LSI 2108 supports IT mode...

So, your questions...

1. If your controllers support IT mode, don't bother replacing them. Otherwise, replace them with LSI 2008/2308-based controllers (IBM M1015, LSI 9210-8i, LSI 9207-8i, etc... or their respective external versions).
2. Again, no point buying new stuff if the old stuff will do...
3. As long as you scale RAM with HDD capacity, you shouldn't have a problem (any CPU that'll take this much memory should suffice). Just add more controllers or expanders.