dell r730xd supported hw question

[jbeez]

Picking up a used Dell r730xd w/ 256gb ecc ram, HBA330 card, it'll have the Dell 6vdpg X710 + I350 nic card. I've read some conflicting threads about this. Not sure if this card works fine in Core and Scale, or just Scale or what.

I'll be running 6 seagate 18tb drives, and I'm planning on booting off of at least 1 satadom, 2 if i can get that going. It looks like they only have 1 power header but two sata ports on the board, so I need to see if I can get 2 working. If anyone has experience trying this before I'd apprecite some feedback on how it went.


Any words of wisdom, don't do it? Looks fine? Thanks.

 

[jgreco]

(covers eyes upon seeing topic) Pleasedeargodlettherenotbethelettersperch730inthemessage .... (opens eyes) PRAYER ANSWERED!

The HBA330 is not something I've laid hands on myself, but trustworthy sources indicate it works fine.

Both X710 and I350 should be fine as well. Recommended devices like these always work in both CORE and SCALE, part of why they are recommended.

Be sure to use a high quality SATADOM. Some of these are little better than a USB flash drive with a SATA instead of USB connector; without a controller and wear leveling, these can wear out fast! You may be better off seeing if you can find a way to tap power inside the chassis and affix some actual SATA SSD's with tape or whatever. Inside some of the older Dells I use Addonics cards like the ones in this article:

Cool hardware: Addonics AD3M2SPX4 M.2 to PCIe converter

I was a bit bothered by the large number of available SATA ports and one or two free PCIe slots in the VM storage server here. With the boost from 64GB to 128GB of RAM, the 256GB M.2 Samsung XP941 with its AHCI interface for L2ARC was feeling a little dated anyways. M.2 offers several...

www.truenas.com

which allow you to mount two SATA M.2 SSD's (still need to be cabled to the mainboard SATA ports, it's just for power) and as a bonus it adds a M.2 NVMe socket for some convenient L2ARC or whatever.

 

[jbeez]

(covers eyes upon seeing topic) Pleasedeargodlettherenotbethelettersperch730inthemessage .... (opens eyes) PRAYER ANSWERED!

The HBA330 is not something I've laid hands on myself, but trustworthy sources indicate it works fine.

Both X710 and I350 should be fine as well. Recommended devices like these always work in both CORE and SCALE, part of why they are recommended.

Be sure to use a high quality SATADOM. Some of these are little better than a USB flash drive with a SATA instead of USB connector; without a controller and wear leveling, these can wear out fast! You may be better off seeing if you can find a way to tap power inside the chassis and affix some actual SATA SSD's with tape or whatever. Inside some of the older Dells I use Addonics cards like the ones in this article:

Cool hardware: Addonics AD3M2SPX4 M.2 to PCIe converter

I was a bit bothered by the large number of available SATA ports and one or two free PCIe slots in the VM storage server here. With the boost from 64GB to 128GB of RAM, the 256GB M.2 Samsung XP941 with its AHCI interface for L2ARC was feeling a little dated anyways. M.2 offers several...

www.truenas.com

which allow you to mount two SATA M.2 SSD's (still need to be cabled to the mainboard SATA ports, it's just for power) and as a bonus it adds a M.2 NVMe socket for some convenient L2ARC or whatever.

Thanks, I am using some of the startech versions of those m.2/nvme to PCIe cards in my existing truenas install, they're working well. I have my boot drives on there and an nvme mirror for some bhyve VMs.

The sata doms I'm using will be the Dell 2PTHF (I believe innodisk manufactures these). I don't plan on doing VMs on here, but if I do I can put some of those adapter cards in to store those images instead of the big spinny disks.

I was research ZIL cache but came across a few posts of yours explaining how much of a waste it would be(at least for me) since I'm just doing async writes.

 

[jgreco]

ZIL cache

Remember that the ZFS intent log (ZIL) is not a cache, even if you put it on a separate log device (SLOG). Note the word "log" in there -- NOT "cache".

If you are storing VM's for another machine (via iSCSI or NFS), or are doing critical database transactions, or other certain types of things, a SLOG may very well be worthwhile. If you NEED sync writes, then think: SLOG. But remember that in no case are sync writes, even via a Barry Allen powered Flash device, going to be faster than just writing asynchronously to the pool.