FreeNAS on Cisco UCS

[Deadringers]

Hey all,

I've got access to some cheap UCS servers for our lab, and was thinking of putting FreeNAS on one to act as a SAN.

The plan:

• Get a UCS with 2x10core CPUs
• 128GB ram
• Put in a few SSDs

quite a simple plan...

Only thing is I'm not sure the UCS hardware is supported.

I had a look on the PDF on this forum for supported hardware, but can't see Cisco or UCS on there.

But - I did find some threads/forums suggesting it was working.

Can someone confirm if this will work, or if it's a stupid idea?

 

[Dice]

I've no clue what's in these servers. A starting point would be if you could dig up model numbers.

 

[Deadringers]

Hey Dice,

It's essentially this but with more RAM:

http://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/servers/0006274900

I don't see any specifics about the HDD/RAID controller beyond
"RAID ( SATA 6Gb/s / SAS 12Gb/s ) - PCIe 3.0"

Which isn't too helpful.

Let me know if this sheds any light on it, or if you would need more info.

 

[Dice]

As far as I can tell these are pretty cool boxes.
You'd have too look into if the backplane and used controller card is using proprietary connectors. You'd need to find a HBA, or assure the "RAID" card can be cross flashed to IT mode. If there are proprietary connectors on the backplane it might be challenging to find a fitting HBA to use with that backplane within "interesting budget".

 

[Deadringers]

Thanks for the feedback Dice, good to know I now have some items to look into.

 

[Wooly Mammoth]

Going by how work have our UCS setup, the UCS uses a separate NAS system for storage for the VM's running on the UCS
If nothing else the UCS will make for a awesome VM box running ESXi.