Dell R720xd running on TrueNAS Scale and PowerVault?

[Daisuke]

I have a Dell R720xd running on TrueNAS Scale and I plan to extend the disks storage with a Dell PowerVault. Right now I have a pool of 12 disks managed by a H710 mini flashed to IT mode. What card do I need to purchase, in order to connect a PowerVault MD1200 to the R720xd? I’m not familiar with PowerVault, thank you for your help.

 

[Jessep]

FYI: Dell Power Vault are LOUD!

Dell Dual Port External 6Gbps SAS HBA

and one or two

External Mini SAS 26pin SAS 2.0 SFF-8088 Male to SFF-8088 Male Cable

 

[Daisuke]

I had no idea, my R720xd is ultra quiet.

 

[Jessep]

reddit md1200 sound - Google Search

You would likely be better served by a second R720xd, Power Vault would be much louder and almost the same power draw.

 

[Daisuke]

@Jessep do you know the part number for Dell Dual Port External 6Gbps SAS HBA? I see several models with different part numbers, just want to make sure I pick the right one. I presume the SAS HBA card does not need to be flashed to IT mode, like the H710 mini I have installed in my R720xd.

For the MD1200 noise, it looks like a good fix is to replace the power supply fans, not interested to run scripts which lower the fans speed:

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

I’ll check both solutions but I’m inclined to use a modified PowerVault, since I don’t need processors and memory, only make drives visible into R720xd

 

[firesyde424]

We have four R720xd servers running TrueNAS core, all attached to Dell MD3060e JBODs using this card:

Based on a quick Google search, that should be this card:

Refurbished: Dell SAS 6Gbps HBA External Controller Full Height (12DNW) - Newegg.com

Buy Refurbished: Dell SAS 6Gbps HBA External Controller Full Height (12DNW) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[Daisuke]

@firesyde424 I'm interested in your current setup, I presume you have the R720xd percs flashed to IT mode. What about MD3060e, any mods to make it compatible with TrueNAS running on R720xd? Thanks.

 

[firesyde424]

@firesyde424 I'm interested in your current setup, I presume you have the R720xd percs flashed to IT mode. What about MD3060e, any mods to make it compatible with TrueNAS running on R720xd? Thanks.

Our current R720xd TrueNAS config looks like this:

• 4 x Dell PE R720xd servers
  • Mix of CPUs. Xeon E5-2620v2, 2630v2, 2660v2, and 2690v1
  • 386GB RAM
  • Three servers have the 12 x 3.5" backplane, one has the 24 x 2.5" backplane
  • Internal PERC H310 mini
  • Intel or Kingston 240GB enterprise SSD mirrored as boot drives in the front backplane
  • U.2 to PCIe adapter with a 3.2TB Micron 9300 MAX U.2 SSD for SLOG
    • It's WAY oversized for SLOG, I know. It was done that way for write endurance. Additionally the 3.2TB model is where write performance maxes out.
  • 2 x Dell PCIe 6GB SAS external dual port HBA controllers each
    • These are not cross flashed, they are running the latest Dell firmware from 2018.
    • Multipathing runs through two different cards so that our systems can tolerate the failure of an HBA without losing connection.
  • Dell PowerVault MD3060e 60 bay 6GB SAS JBOD
    • Three of the servers:
      • 60 x 4TB Seagate Constellation ES.3 7200RPM 6GB SAS HDD
        • 5 x 12 RAIDZ2 vdevs
    • One of the servers
      • 60 x 12TB Seagate Exos X12 12TB 7200RPM 12GB SAS HDD
        • 5 x 12 RAIDZ2 vdevs
  • 2 x Intel X520 or X710 dual port 10Gbe DAS NICs
    • 2 pairs of 10Gbe LAGGs using LACP, one for management networks and one for storage networks
  • TrueNAS Core 12.0-U8.1
    • Prior to the security issue with nginx, these were all running various versions between 12.0-U3 and 12.0-U6. Their original config was FreeNAS 9.11 and 9.13 which ran on these servers for more than 5 years. Once the newer versions of TrueNAS were released that were incompatible with snapshots from the older FreeNAS versions, these were upgraded to TrueNAS core.

We do not have any mods or custom firmware in these setups, it just wasn't necessary. All of this hardware works in TrueNAS without issue. We did have to change a few settings in the BIOS. The first one was to set the external HBAs to only scan for drives after the TrueNAS OS starts loading. Otherwise, the servers would add about 20-30 minutes to the already considerable boot time due to scanning every one of 60+ drives. The second change was to disable Dell's watchdog service which would incorrectly detect a "hung" OS and forcibly reboot the server, taking the TrueNAS offline.