Cisco UCS running FreeNAS

[Deadringers]

Hey all,

FYI Cisco UCS servers seem to run FreeNAS without much of a problem :)

Here is my build with part numbers as best as I can get for your reference:

Cisco UCS C220 M4s
2 x 10Gb NIC - N2XX-AIPCI01= - Intel X520 Dual Port 10Gb SFP+ Adapter
2 x 10 Core CPU - E5-2640 v4 @ 2.4GHz
128 GB ECC Ram
8 x 10k 1.2TB SAS disks
Cisco SAS HBA for Disk pass through - UCSC-SAS12GHBA= - Cisco 12Gbps Modular SAS HBA


This results in FreeNAS being able to see all disks, serials and SMART data.

Seems to be working well so far as an iSCSI storage target for some ESXI hosts, so if you have any questions let me know.

 

[tvsjr]

Make sure you have sync=always set... which will require a fast SSD device for SLOG.

 

[Deadringers]

Make sure you have sync=always set... which will require a fast SSD device for SLOG.

Thanks but I don't think I need a SLOG device - I don't have that many writes and with 128GB Ram I'm doing okay :)

 

[Arwen]

@Deadringers,
Using "sync=always" has little to do with memory. It's for data integrity.
And if using "sync=always" is too slow, then a high speed SSD used for
a SLOG, (or 2 for mirrored SLOG), is suggested.

The "sync=always" makes certain your VMs, (through iSCSI), don't get
a corrupted file system that you store in a ZVol. It's only needed if the
FreeNAS server crashes at the wrong time. Meaning a write was in
progress by a VM and got only partly written due to FreeNAS server
crash. A ZIL or SLOG when using "sync=always" prevents that specific
case.

Both "sync=always" & SLOGs are generally mis-understood by many
new, casual or even experienced ZFS NAS users. Even by me when I
first bought my FreeNAS 2 years ago.