Our business does datacenter hardware remarketing, and we often come across high end storage stuff that is mostly scrapped. I’m looking into giving part of these components a “second life”, and I’ve thought FreeNAS might be an option. The issue with high end storage solutions is that the controllers are mostly useless without licenses, but the storage arrays and drives are in perfect working order. Proprietary cabling is sometimes necessary, but this is also easy to come by for us. The following is an example of what I’m trying to do, and I’d like to hear your opinion.
I’d use an HP DL360 G5 or similar with the following specs:
1 x XEON QC at 3GHz
32 GB of RAM (64 is possible but really expensive)
1 x P400i RAID controller with BBU.
3 x 36 GB hotswap 2,5” 15 K SAS Hard drives
1 x 8Gbit HBA (Dell G425C) This is necessary because of the proprietary cables used by the EMC devices described below.
To the HBA I will connect, Daisy chained, between 1 and 8 EMC arrays. These are “dumb” fibre channel devices that come from a DMX4-950. This would give me a total of between 30 and 120 drives. Right I'd test with 400 GB 10K RPM fibre drives. (Total 48 TB max)
The devices are recognised by the HBA, and I have been able to use DBAN (Linux based) to wipe the drives. I’m seeing about 400 MB/sec as the arrays are only 4Gbit. I could of course use more HBA’s in a different model server to increase bandwidth.
I will install FreeNas on a hardware RAID 1 + 1 hotspare, on the P400i Controller, using 36GB 15K SAS drives. I know I won’t be able to use the space on those drives but I (obviously) don’t care.
The 30 to 120 drives on the storage arrays should be seen by FreeNAS as JBOD, the HBA does no hardware raid, of course.
So my questions:
1. I know it's recommended to put the OS on a USB stick but … because wasted space on the small SAS drives is not an issue, and because of reliability I think the HDD option might be better. Would you agree with me or should I still use your recommended USB method?
2. Would I benefit from a second CPU on the DL360 or would it make no difference?
3. Do you know if the rest of the hardware will be compatible with FreeNAS?
4. Performance isn’t that important, but I would like the whole thing to be reliable. Should I be OK?
5. If using the max number of drives, would I need more RAM?
6. Does using FreeNas for this even make sense … or is it too much for FreeNas to handle? (no offence intended!). I know it’s a bit of an open question but anyway …
Thanks in advance.
I’d use an HP DL360 G5 or similar with the following specs:
1 x XEON QC at 3GHz
32 GB of RAM (64 is possible but really expensive)
1 x P400i RAID controller with BBU.
3 x 36 GB hotswap 2,5” 15 K SAS Hard drives
1 x 8Gbit HBA (Dell G425C) This is necessary because of the proprietary cables used by the EMC devices described below.
To the HBA I will connect, Daisy chained, between 1 and 8 EMC arrays. These are “dumb” fibre channel devices that come from a DMX4-950. This would give me a total of between 30 and 120 drives. Right I'd test with 400 GB 10K RPM fibre drives. (Total 48 TB max)
The devices are recognised by the HBA, and I have been able to use DBAN (Linux based) to wipe the drives. I’m seeing about 400 MB/sec as the arrays are only 4Gbit. I could of course use more HBA’s in a different model server to increase bandwidth.
I will install FreeNas on a hardware RAID 1 + 1 hotspare, on the P400i Controller, using 36GB 15K SAS drives. I know I won’t be able to use the space on those drives but I (obviously) don’t care.
The 30 to 120 drives on the storage arrays should be seen by FreeNAS as JBOD, the HBA does no hardware raid, of course.
So my questions:
1. I know it's recommended to put the OS on a USB stick but … because wasted space on the small SAS drives is not an issue, and because of reliability I think the HDD option might be better. Would you agree with me or should I still use your recommended USB method?
2. Would I benefit from a second CPU on the DL360 or would it make no difference?
3. Do you know if the rest of the hardware will be compatible with FreeNAS?
4. Performance isn’t that important, but I would like the whole thing to be reliable. Should I be OK?
5. If using the max number of drives, would I need more RAM?
6. Does using FreeNas for this even make sense … or is it too much for FreeNas to handle? (no offence intended!). I know it’s a bit of an open question but anyway …
Thanks in advance.