Dell 2950 + MD1000 or MD3000, Will this work?

[guldan]

Hey Guys,

I have acquired said server and have both storage enclosures, MD1000 is Direct Attached Storage, requiring a perc5/6 which I have.. MD3000 has raid cards onboard and I would need an HBA.
Not sure which one I will use but my question is will Freenas see my array?

I'd like to install Freenas onto the 2950, direct attach w/ perc5/6 to Array. But the RAID is done on the Perc5 card.. I've heard that you can RAID0 all your disks on the Perc and then use ZFS once you install Freenas as a work around.

Is this a good idea? are there any caveats?

Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

It's definitely far from ideal. If you do a RAID0(which you probably will) you will lose the ability to run SMART diagnostics on your disks. I don't know much about the 2950 or MD1000/MD3000 but I'd look at getting yourself IBM M1015 8 port controllers. They're cheap and "just work" but they may not be optimal for you.

 

[guldan]

It's definitely far from ideal. If you do a RAID0(which you probably will) you will lose the ability to run SMART diagnostics on your disks. I don't know much about the 2950 or MD1000/MD3000 but I'd look at getting yourself IBM M1015 8 port controllers. They're cheap and "just work" but they may not be optimal for you.

Well 2950+Perc just works as well, perc5 can do raid5, perc6 can do raid6.. but that's through windows. MD3000 has raid controllers ON the array so if I use that with an HBA card Freenas should see it right? that might be optimal.

Can anyone weigh in ?

 

[pirateghost]

my PERC 6 controllers pass everything straight through to FreeNAS, I never had to set up any form of RAID on the individual disks

 

[guldan]

my PERC 6 controllers pass everything straight through to FreeNAS, I never had to set up any form of RAID on the individual disks

What array do you have? is it an MD1000/3000? are you direct attach or using HBA? I have a perc5 right now but would buy a perc6 for raid6 capability

 

[jgreco]

The PERC 6 controllers are custom builds for Dell that are built around the LSI SAS1078 single-chip RAID controller.

The IBM M1015 controller is based on the LSI SAS2008 single-chip RAID controller, functionally nearly identical to LSI 9220-8i.

From memory, I believe the 1078 is a 3Gb/s model and most (all?) of the LSI 3Gb/s chipsets max out at 2TB hard drive size. Your best bet for FreeNAS is to see if you can arrange for JBOD passthru to the host. However, that MD3000 has its own ideas about how it is going to want to present disks to the hosts, so you have two levels of annoyance to work your way through - the MD3000 and the PERC6.

 

[pirateghost]

What array do you have? is it an MD1000/3000? are you direct attach or using HBA? I have a perc5 right now but would buy a perc6 for raid6 capability

direct attached to HBA.

 

[guldan]

direct attached to HBA.

If that is the case, this is the route I will go.. Buy an HBA SAS card to dump in my 2950 and direct attach to the MD1000. Use Freenas and setup RAIDZ2. I'll look at the cards jgreco suggested.

With the direct passthrough I will get hotswap functionality as well? another question is.. what is better RAID6 perc6e through Windows or Freenas RAIDz2?

I guess a big difference is the Raid6 is through a perc (hardware) and ZFS is software RAID.

Remember i'm using this for media storage/streaming so most important is not losing my data and there aren't a lot of IOPs or bandwidth needed.

 

[pirateghost]

I am not using anything other than PERC + SATA disks, i do not have an MD***XX at this time, so I cannot comment on that.

I refuse to use the RAID features of the card, because I use ZFS in FreeNAS. That was kind of the entire point of me installing FreeNAS was for a stable ZFS environment. Out of the 2 FreeNAS boxes I have in my house, one of them is only for streaming media to all my HTPCs in the house, and it is the one with the PERC cards. I would recommend 100% using ZFS instead of the RAID on the card(s)

As for hotswap, yes, I have that ability with my 5in3 drive bays.

 

[guldan]

Yeah I really like ZFS, I do need to know still if Freenas will work with an HBA + MD1000.

The 2950 doesn't have enough drive bays, I just want to use it for the OS and for its ability to link to the MD1000 / dual nics / ILO etc,.