Dell R730 with Dell PERC 730P mini

[swapnilrk]

Hi All,

I am building truenas build to run some VMs in the lab enviroment.

There is no requirement of data reliability and redundancy, the only requirement is performance.

Following is my build

Dell PowerEdge R730 V3
2x Xeon E5 2670v3 Processor
128GB RAM
Dell PERC H730P controller
5x Dell Toshiba 1.6TB SSD SAS 2.5 12G
2x Chelsio T420-CR

My final aim here is to provide maximum IOPS and read and writes, Hence, I am planning to create single pool in stripped mode and exposing it as zfs-volume to esxi over iscsi where i will be running all the VMs.

My question is will it really make any difference if I use H730P or H330 HBA flashed in IT mode.

 

[neb50]

Yes as the H730P will only connect at 1.5G instead of the 12G that it is capable of when set to HBA mode. The HBA330 or H330 flashed to be a HBA330 will connect at full data rate.

 

[swapnilrk]

Yes as the H730P will only connect at 1.5G instead of the 12G that it is capable of when set to HBA mode. The HBA330 or H330 flashed to be a HBA330 will connect at full data rate.

I am very new to this, can you please ellaborate more about this 1.5G and 12G ?, Just to add I am currently running H730P in HBA mode

 

[neb50]

The drive connection speed will be less than a modern spinning drive when used in HBA mode. You state that you have 5 12G SSD's and if you want them to work at 12G speeds, you will need to use something different for your SAS controller otherwise you will get 1.5G connection speeds to the drives.

 

[Imran]

The drive connection speed will be less than a modern spinning drive when used in HBA mode. You state that you have 5 12G SSD's and if you want them to work at 12G speeds, you will need to use something different for your SAS controller otherwise you will get 1.5G connection speeds to the drives.

Could you please share any documentation that supports this statement? From the Dell support site it says H730 (not H730P) supports HBA at 12Gbps speeds.

PERC H730 SPEED, NON RAID, RAID 0... | DELL Technologies

I want to know if the PERC H730 will do12gbps in non raid? I have googled this for 3 weeks and cant find any clear answer, only answers when RAID 0, RAID 1, etc... the PERC H730 is a 12gbps card, I...

www.dell.com

the H730P datasheet doesn't mention it either

https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/PowerEdge-RAID-Controller-H730P-Spec-Sheet.pdf

 

[neb50]

Could you please share any documentation that supports this statement? From the Dell support site it says H730 (not H730P) supports HBA at 12Gbps speeds.

PERC H730 SPEED, NON RAID, RAID 0... | DELL Technologies

I want to know if the PERC H730 will do12gbps in non raid? I have googled this for 3 weeks and cant find any clear answer, only answers when RAID 0, RAID 1, etc... the PERC H730 is a 12gbps card, I...

www.dell.com

the H730P datasheet doesn't mention it either

https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/PowerEdge-RAID-Controller-H730P-Spec-Sheet.pdf

I connected to a system and got that connection speed reported and verified with a connection that topped out at that rate. I switched out to an HBA330 board and got the 12GBps and 6GBps connection speeds that my drives supported and the drives transferred at close to that rate.

 

[ChrisRJ]

My final aim here is to provide maximum IOPS and read and writes, Hence, I am planning to create single pool in stripped mode and exposing it as zfs-volume to esxi over iscsi where i will be running all the VMs.

A stripe is only suitable for temporary data, otherwise the risk of loosing data would be too high. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?

What is your requirement in terms of IOPS?