Hey Everyone,
I'm pretty new to TrueNAS, having used other ecosystems like Nimble and Simplivity in the past. We are rapidly running out of space, and are in the process of getting dedicated TrueNAS systems from iXsystems, but I figured we might as well use some of our old hardware as well. The Nimble CS220 has long since left warranty, and we haven't had any support or software updates in 5-6 years. Because of that, and because we are getting brand new TrueNAS devices, I figured we may as well make all of our storage into TrueNAS boxes. To start with, for those of you who don't know, the CS220s is basically a rebranded SuperMicro chassis with two nodes in it, each connected to the backplane with 16 drives connected. These nodes are of course completely self-sufficient and have their own HBA cards. Here is what I have done so far:
1) Overwrite the BIOS on the nodes. They each have a X8DTS-F Supermicro mobo, and had a special BIOS from Nimble. I acquired the normal BIOS from Supermicro, so I could finally access all the normal functions.
2) Flash the AOM-SAS2-L8 HBA card. It uses a LSI 2008, so I followed the instructions here to change the board from IR mode to IT mode, and upgrade from Firmware version 10 to version 20.
3) Removed all of the 3.5" SATA drives attached to the SAS937 Backplane and attached them to Linux and wiped all their crazy partitions
3) Inserted a NGFF SATA drive to boot from, so I wouldn't be using a USB fob anymore, as I saw on here that it was no longer recommeded.
4) Installed TrueNAS Core to the NGFF drive.
Ideally what I'd like to do is to have both nodes be able to access the drives for higher throughput and IOPS. (And fail-over for each other). But I would also settle for any way for the two nodes to support each other and each able to access all the drives. I know I could install TrueNAS Scale on each controller and have each of them use half the drives, but that seems a little bit of a crazy way around it.....
Any help would be great. I'd be glad to provide more information if requested, just not sure what else you would need.
I'm pretty new to TrueNAS, having used other ecosystems like Nimble and Simplivity in the past. We are rapidly running out of space, and are in the process of getting dedicated TrueNAS systems from iXsystems, but I figured we might as well use some of our old hardware as well. The Nimble CS220 has long since left warranty, and we haven't had any support or software updates in 5-6 years. Because of that, and because we are getting brand new TrueNAS devices, I figured we may as well make all of our storage into TrueNAS boxes. To start with, for those of you who don't know, the CS220s is basically a rebranded SuperMicro chassis with two nodes in it, each connected to the backplane with 16 drives connected. These nodes are of course completely self-sufficient and have their own HBA cards. Here is what I have done so far:
1) Overwrite the BIOS on the nodes. They each have a X8DTS-F Supermicro mobo, and had a special BIOS from Nimble. I acquired the normal BIOS from Supermicro, so I could finally access all the normal functions.
2) Flash the AOM-SAS2-L8 HBA card. It uses a LSI 2008, so I followed the instructions here to change the board from IR mode to IT mode, and upgrade from Firmware version 10 to version 20.
3) Removed all of the 3.5" SATA drives attached to the SAS937 Backplane and attached them to Linux and wiped all their crazy partitions
3) Inserted a NGFF SATA drive to boot from, so I wouldn't be using a USB fob anymore, as I saw on here that it was no longer recommeded.
4) Installed TrueNAS Core to the NGFF drive.
Ideally what I'd like to do is to have both nodes be able to access the drives for higher throughput and IOPS. (And fail-over for each other). But I would also settle for any way for the two nodes to support each other and each able to access all the drives. I know I could install TrueNAS Scale on each controller and have each of them use half the drives, but that seems a little bit of a crazy way around it.....
Any help would be great. I'd be glad to provide more information if requested, just not sure what else you would need.
