Disk not showing up when creating pool, but are showing up in disks

[sollo]

Hello Everyone,

I just finished a clean install of TrueNAS onto a Dell Power edge R620 server.

Here are my system specs:
-Dell Power edge R620
-Two Xeon E5-2609 2.40GHz Quad Core Processors
-16 GB of PC3L-8500R Registered Server Memory RAM
-Dell PERC H710 Mini Raid Controller
-10 one terabyte drives connected together in RAID5 for 8.5 TB of useable storage

My issue that when I go to create a new storage pool, TrueNAS cannot find any disks. However, the 8.5 TB array does appear in the disks section. I've been stuck trying to figure this out.

Has anyone experienced this problem or know a away to make the 8.5 TB array appear when creating a pool?

Thank you all for your time.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Please see the resource about HBA vs RAID cards. You presently have the latter, but it can thankfully be converted to the former (or replaced by the H310)

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

The short version is "TrueNAS doesn't play nice with RAID cards, you'll need to replace that."

 

[sollo]

Thanks for that reply man. It really helped me out.

 

[HoneyBadger]

No worries. I'd suggest just pulling the H710 and installing a (crossflashed) H310 instead - ZFS will act as your "RAID controller"

Question - what's the intended use case for this storage? Regular file storage will be fine with that, but for heavy lifting you're a little light on the RAM.

 

[sollo]

Your post actually led me down a well of great information. I was able to crossflash my H710 into IT mode and with TrueNAS installed to an internal flash drive, it was able to see and properly connect to all the drives. I have them in RAID5 via the software.

The use of this is actually a storage dump for a Zoneminder security camera system. I set up a huge 26+ camera system for the company I work for and we need a truckload of storage to keep all the recordings. I plan to connect Zonemidner to TrueNAS with a network share, and store a revolving 90 day supply of recordings. So I don't think the usage is going to overwhelm my RAM capacity but if it gets choppy I can always throw in more.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Glad to hear it's working. Just prepare for the idea that you might need to increase the storage, and 2.5" drives don't really go well with that. A 3.5" chassis will let you start packing in 10-18TB per drive, extending your retention window significantly.

I'd also suggest (if you can accept the overhead) switching to a RAIDZ2 (two drive failure tolerance) - for security footage you want to ensure that you don't put 90 days of data at risk when having to swap a drive.