I have an HP ProLiant DL380 G9 server I want to use for TrueNAS. It has (2) Xeon E5-2667 v3 @ 3.20GHz CPUs (16 physical cores) and 256GB of ECC RAM. It has (12) 3.5" SAS bays in front (populated with 12x1TB SAS drives) and (2) 2.5" SAS bays in back (empty) and a 2-slot NVME card (empty) in a PCIE slot. Currently, this server is running ESXI 7.0 and vCenter Server appliance and that's it. I am working on gathering the right hardware to put together a solid NAS/backup machine with additional VMs.
This server has a P840 RAID card, but I know I need (2) 8-port HBA cards or (1) 16-port HBA to run the 12 drives directly and give TrueNAS direct access to the drives. Do I need to remove the RAID card or can I just add the additional card/s and not use the RAID card?
Also, I can get my hands on up to (20) 3TB 7200 SAS drives (Seagate Constellation ST33000650SS) used for $20/ea. Would these perform well in a TrueNAS setup? I know they are used and not huge, but the price is very good and I could fit 12 of them in my server with lots of spares. Or should I switch the drives to 5400rpm SATA drives and will this work without too much hassle? Any advice or suggestions on this are welcome.
Also, would it be reasonable to install 2 NVME drives and use one for a boot drive for TrueNAS and the other for possible SLOG or L2ARC use?
Are there other factors that you think I'm not considering? Thanks for the help. :)
This server has a P840 RAID card, but I know I need (2) 8-port HBA cards or (1) 16-port HBA to run the 12 drives directly and give TrueNAS direct access to the drives. Do I need to remove the RAID card or can I just add the additional card/s and not use the RAID card?
Also, I can get my hands on up to (20) 3TB 7200 SAS drives (Seagate Constellation ST33000650SS) used for $20/ea. Would these perform well in a TrueNAS setup? I know they are used and not huge, but the price is very good and I could fit 12 of them in my server with lots of spares. Or should I switch the drives to 5400rpm SATA drives and will this work without too much hassle? Any advice or suggestions on this are welcome.
Also, would it be reasonable to install 2 NVME drives and use one for a boot drive for TrueNAS and the other for possible SLOG or L2ARC use?
Are there other factors that you think I'm not considering? Thanks for the help. :)