Changing Controllers

[dmattox10]

I love my Dell C2100, despite it's 2TB limitation. That said, I want to replace the HBA (PCI-e) with a quad gigabit NIC (For iSCSI) while continuing to use the dual motherboard GBE ports for CIFS. There is another PCI-e slot, but it's on a proprietary "mezzanine" connector. If I remove my current HBA, and switch to this Mezzanine HBA, will I be able to keep the data on my RAID-Z2 array?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Assuming both HBAs are in IT mode, it should just work. If either HBA was in any kind of RAID configuration, you may run into trouble.

 

[Ericloewe]

Note that mezzanine cards may be restricted to official firmware, which can make your life harder.

Also note that ZFS will not expand a pool if the drives magically grow - drives need to be replaced if their full capacity is to be used.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Your idea to add more NICs to get more speed is a questionable idea. Make sure you know how all that stuff works.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[dmattox10]

According to a post on this page:
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...dell-h310-with-dell-hba-or-lsi-firmware.7538/
I can flash the mezzanine to IT mode no problem. I just needed to know I wouldn't lose any data.
As far as the Quad GBE, I'm not going for speed, I'm trying to use iSCSI multipath, and put those NIC's, as well as 4 from each of my other servers into a VLAN. My switch and hardware all support it.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I can flash the mezzanine to IT mode no problem. I just needed to know I wouldn't lose any data.

Is the existing HBA in IT mode?

 

[dmattox10]

The existing HBA is NOT flashed IT, however, it defaults to passing thru JBOD. Will this be a problem? Now I see you mentioned this on your first post.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Did you have to initialize the drives with your controller? If you did then you can't change the controller. You also shouldn't be using it with zfs.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[dmattox10]

I did not have to initialize the drives, they were plug and play.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

it defaults to passing thru JBOD. Will this be a problem?

Probably not, but the only way to know for sure is to try it. There's no reason to expect data loss - if ZFS doesn't recognize the pool, it won't import - but it would make sense to refresh your backups before proceeding. Stuff happens.