Dp sas drives, msa70, and freenas

[High Voltage]

So I have recently rebuilt my freenas server to utilize it for virtualization in addition to storage. I also recently purchased an HP MSA 70 storage enclosure which supports dual port SAS storage, upon researching it HP says it only open VMS and hp-ux support dual Port drives. I however am wondering for use with High throughput storage for virtual machines, if set up properly for dual path through-put, is freenas able to utilize dual path drives, given that the article I was reading was very old in the world of computers.

If so, is there any real world benefit to doing so outside of path redundancy, because if all I would have achieved with that is redundancy in the form of extra paths to the data, then this is merely extra complexity, for no gain from my usage scenario.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

That may be all HP officially supports, but I think you should be ok with a SAS HBA that FreeNAS supports such as an LSI 9207. I decommissioned my MSA 70 quite some time ago. If memory serves, that is limited to 3G SAS. I would say it is likely that with the right cables and HBA you SHOULD get multi-path support. I can tell you that I get multi path support in both a D2600 and D2700 enclosure connected to an LSI 9207-8e.

 

[High Voltage]

That may be all HP officially supports, but I think you should be ok with a SAS HBA that FreeNAS supports such as an LSI 9207. I decommissioned my MSA 70 quite some time ago. If memory serves, that is limited to 3G SAS. I would say it is likely that with the right cables and HBA you SHOULD get multi-path support. I can tell you that I get multi path support in both a D2600 and D2700 enclosure connected to an LSI 9207-8e.

Epic... I was mostly curious if freenas itself supported multipath, I know all of this hardware supports it if your confirming the lsi hba can, everything else I know can.

As for the sas 3g limit? That would be my problem either way given that my expanders are 3g as well.

Thank you!

My only other question is this: outside of path redundancy, would I get any other benefits, like extra IOPS or concurrent throughput from that? My experience in server storage is limited, but expanding, however this is experience I have not yet gained, thus my inquiry here.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

I know all of this hardware supports it if your confirming the lsi hba can

My enclosures are different (D2600 & D2700), but he HBA absolutely supports it and FreeNAS recognizes it (multipath).

As for the sas 3g limit

That is a limit of the enclosure/expander in the enclosure (I did a quick google on the specs for it). If that would actually become a bottleneck is a different question. That depends on the drives and how you use them.

My only other question is this: outside of path redundancy, would I get any other benefits, like extra IOPS or concurrent throughput from that?

I am not sure what you are asking here. Do you mean more out of multipath or more out of a faster enclosure? The core principle is that you are only as fast as your slowest component. Most commonly that would be the spinning hard drive. There are other threads on how you structure the vdevs (FreeNAS/ZFS equivalent to virtual drives). You pick that based on the desired workload and level of redundancy. I don't have the link handy, but the Uncle Fester's guide should give you a good place to start on that.

 

[High Voltage]

More out of a multipath, given thats the storage I'll be using for virtualization. And as for the 3g, i was not talking about the msa70, i was talking about my sas expanders connected to my hba, those would be my bottleneck regardless of the enclosure.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Unless you have some other arrays or enclosures attached, you shouldn't need an external expander from an LSI-9207-8e going to the MSA70. I don't know that having in in there will break anything, but I am not understanding why you would need it. I have (2) physical connections from my 9207-8e going to the D2600/D2700. One port on the 9207 goes to one controller, and the other port on the 9207 goes to the other controller. There is an internal expander within the D2600 and the D2700. My cabling arrangement was the same with the MSA 70, but it was going to a P822 RAID controller.

 

[High Voltage]

Unless you have some other arrays or enclosures attached, you shouldn't need an external expander from an LSI-9207-8e going to the MSA70. I don't know that having in in there will break anything, but I am not understanding why you would need it. I have (2) physical connections from my 9207-8e going to the D2600/D2700. One port on the 9207 goes to one controller, and the other port on the 9207 goes to the other controller. There is an internal expander within the D2600 and the D2700. My cabling arrangement was the same with the MSA 70, but it was going to a P822 RAID controller.

I do specifically because of the way I'm using my system, that being the second expansion chassis I am using, plus the only one that will have sas drives, 15 internal drives in the base chassis, with my first expansion chassis of 15 sata drives, and then that one with its 25 2.5" sas capacity as well. Otherwise no, i definitely wouldn't. However just right now i have ~30 drives before that one's added capacity.