Dell MD1400/MD1420 as a JBOD device for FreeNAS

[viniciusferrao]

Hello guys,

I'm architecting a new FreeNAS box to replace our production storage. The main reason of using DELL is their 5yr warranty. We've come with those decision since our first SuperMicro boxes suffered with those Seagate 3TB disks plagued of random deaths. (More info here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure)

So I'm considering a PowerEdge R630 as the main server and thos MD1400/MD1420 as JBOD devices with an LSI SAS 9300-8e HBA card on the R630 to control those JBODs.

The point of this thread is to discuss if the solution is good and viable. And of course if someone runs on something similar with DELL hardware your comments are welcome!

Thanks in advance,
Vinícius.

 

[dlavigne]

Did you end up using this? If so, how did it work out?

 

[viniciusferrao]

Did you end up using this? If so, how did it work out?

Not yet. I'm considering the purchase...

But I'm really afraid to spent a lot of money and something goes wrong after. :(

At this moment I'm doing some quotations with DELL the check if the solution is monetary viable.

- V.


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[cyberjock]

I realize I'm arriving late to the show. I, personally, would avoid Dell as much as possible. Not because Dell sucks but because so many people have problems with Dell stuff. If I were spending a hoarders stack of cash on hardware, I'd want stuff that everyone else is using because if everyone else is having problems its likely to get fixed vice some obscure problem with proprietary hardware.

 

[viniciusferrao]

I realize I'm arriving late to the show. I, personally, would avoid Dell as much as possible. Not because Dell sucks but because so many people have problems with Dell stuff. If I were spending a hoarders stack of cash on hardware, I'd want stuff that everyone else is using because if everyone else is having problems its likely to get fixed vice some obscure problem with proprietary hardware.

Thank you Cyberjock. I just realized no one ever used this scheme and I'm not bad enough to try this myself.

I do have installed some single R730 with PERC H330 with mrsas(4), and it worked*. But when buying a new hardware I will do the old good Supermicro build...

*working at least until today :)




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[basebird]

*working at least until today :)

viniciusferrao, just out of curiosity, is that PERC H330 still running a ZFS pool?

Thank you, by the way, for documenting your quest to try to cross-flash the H330 to IT mode, even if it wasn't successful. Your posts were one of the very few resources on this topic I was able to find and it gave me valuable orientation in evaluating if we should use a Dell T440 as a FreeNAS box.
No final conclusion so far, but I'm pretty much decided not to do it at the moment, at least not as a production machine. However, it's 2018 now and I'd still be interested in your experience.