Dell PowerEdge R530 configuration examples (?)

[Rickles65]

Looking for example systems based on the R530.

I had Core running on one as a demonstrator for the team, occasionally on shutdown or reboot drive 0 (where Core was installed) would "fail" to boot. No big deal, rerun the installer and we'd be back up in a few minutes.

The initial hurdle was placing the controller (H730) into HBA mode. We thought that maybe that was the issue with the drive 0 "death" on reboot. We swapped drives as well, problem still showed up now and then.

Now we want to put it and a few others into production.

I ordered the software cable assembly and removed the H730.

Now none of the drives are visible (all in initialization state - slow green blink on the trays).

Thoughts, or ideas on the next step? I use TrueNAS core at home on a purpose built system, but we have multiple R530's at work we'd like to reuse as TrueNAS targets for Veeam and general storage purposes. So being able to stretch out the investment And the boxes of 3TB SAS drives would be great.

 

[jgreco]

The H730 does not have an "HBA mode." It has a "RAID card with major lobotomy mode", which is not what we're looking for when we say ZFS wants an HBA. Please review the following article:

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

There's some recommendation for that unit and a particular true HBA that's known to work fine in it. I think it may be the HBA330. You need to replace your H730 with a true LSI IT-mode HBA supported by TrueNAS.

 

[Rickles65]

True, it's more of a pass-through mode.

I guess the better question is *which* card to use? I'd think switch to the Dell that's been flashed since it occupies the mini monolithic spot on the board.

Just for clarity (in my head, not being a "smarty pants") what's the "why" behind it? I've read a fair bit in the forums since working on this project and everyone seems to refer back to it being a ZFS issue. We had nearly 50 Ubuntu servers at a previous facility on the same Dell platform with the H730's all in pass-through serving ZFS pools and never had an issue. Just trying to understand. I guess maybe it's not TrueNAS Core itself, maybe BSD is the cause? If that's the case, does it make more sense to go to Scale?

 

[Rickles65]

Dell HBA330 mini monolithic (=9300-8i) w/ P16 IT mode H330

Seems to be the match. Does include the FreeNAS/ZFS keywords in the title and it is a vendor mentioned in the link.

 

[jgreco]

Just for clarity (in my head, not being a "smarty pants") what's the "why" behind it?

Read the linked article, please. It's not a BSD issue. Proxmox, Nexenta, and other ZFS projects also all discourage the use of RAID controllers, to varying degrees of enthusiasm. It really has to do with what level of correctness you want things to be handled. The fake "HBA mode" gets you some of the things you need, doesn't get you others. Scale uses the same firmware, so that's not buying you anything.