Few Q's HP ML10 Gen9 (PCIe sataboard and PCIe 4prt Gb LAN adaptor)

[r-p]

I have a HP Proliant ML10 Gen9 that I have fiddled with, but I have yet to add harddisks to it. My purpose will mostly be a simple central file storage to the rest of the house. Possibly also doing some datacollection from some camera's in the future. Or other stuff I haven't thought of yet, but nothing special.

I bought a 'Chinese' PCIe to 4xSATA. If it is recognised, should I use if for a 7 or 8 disc raidz2 or should I limit it to 6 discs on the mainboard (trustworthy) and add another separate raidZ1/Z2/mirror to the PCIe board? I have 6x3TB and 1x4TB to put in a 7 disc raidz2, so I could e.g. do a 6x3TB Z2 and a 2x4TB mirror on the PCIe card.
This is both a question in should I trust the 'Chinese' cheapo board as well as in general if it is safer to not mix mainboard and PCIe sataconnectors (I have views on this, but would appreciate your views).

I found a Proliant 4port Gb PCIe card (NC364T, prices ranging from 40 to >400$ :D). Not a clue where I got it from. (a) will it work with FreeNas? and (b) is there any advantage of adding it? I have read of servers having multiple LANports, but have never researched what the advantage might be (in a simple home-network).

I had more Q's, but forgot. Will add them if needed (and remembered) later...

 

[Inxsible]

I bought a 'Chinese' PCIe to 4xSATA. If it is recognised, should I use if for a 7 or 8 disc raidz2 or should I limit it to 6 discs on the mainboard (trustworthy) and add another separate raidZ1/Z2/mirror to the PCIe board?

IF (and that's a big if) it is recognized, I'd create a separate pool and use it as backup of the first. I am not trusting the card on my main pool. However, even if it's recognized, I'd much rather utilize the PCI port for a decent HBA which would allow you to create a 8disc Z2 configuration and keep your SATA ports on the board available for a boot SSD.

I have 6x3TB and 1x4TB to put in a 7 disc raidz2, so I could e.g. do a 6x3TB Z2 and a 2x4TB mirror on the PCIe card.

I am confused -- if you have 1x4TB, how will you create a 2x4TB mirror? Are you planning on buying another 4TB? Even so, I would rather not mix different pool configurations (Z2 AND mirror etc.) Just create a 6x3TB Z2 -- unless you need more space than that. If so, let us know what you intend on doing with the pool so we can provide recommendations.

I found a Proliant 4port Gb PCIe card (NC364T, prices ranging from 40 to >400$ :D). Not a clue where I got it from. (a) will it work with FreeNas? and (b) is there any advantage of adding it?

Any advantage to be had would materialize only if you are willing to LAGG multiple ports together to get better throughput. Usually for home networks though, the bottlenecks are your HDDs and you wouldn't see any difference. Also, LAGG is useful if you have other networking devices (switches etc) capable of handling the extra throughput -- for example managed switches and/or 10GB switches etc.

 

[r-p]

I am very new to this stuff but wanted to avoid another Seagate Central fiasco: that served me perfectly for 2 years even though it would be noticeably slow when using it from 2 computers at the same time. It eventually died while still working once in a while (but I blamed the network). Most personal data was backed up elsewhere, but given how many drives (from me and the wife) are still waiting for me to build a miniature cleanroom to (attempt to) mechanically repair them, I want to have a much higher level of redundancy.
This ML10 Gen9 was cheap and will do what I want. Obviously, I am limited by knowledge, so I may not know what I want next week...

But for now: just boot freenas from a 16GB USB stick and run a 6 x3TBdisk Z2. The 12TB of useful space will be enough at present, but I want to keep options open for the future.
Adding a new drive to extend a pool is supposedly just around the corner (last I read it wasn't operational), but adding e.g. a second pool with a (as you figured out a yet to be bought,) new 4TB and the old 4TB drive to have an extra back-up of important data, might be an option.


As for the 4 port card, I found it lying around, probably new and I don't recall how I got it. Probably from an uncle that does a lot of IT stuff or from the friend that bought the Proliant for me (thanks to cashbacks in the UK, I ended up paying little over half what it would have cost me if I had bought it in NL and that includes shipping it to me!). If there is no need to add it (just now), then I won't.

 

[Zredwire]

I started out using Freenas with a HP ML10 Gen9. While you can squeeze 8 LFF hard disk into the case (only 5 without some adapters), the ventilation lacks. If I remember correctly there is only one case fan. I ended up moving the internals to another case for a while until I could get different hardware. If you use the ML10 Gen9 case, make sure to keep an eye on your HD temps.