Help understanding Hardware setup for Install

[aja44]

Good Afternoon,

I am looking to create a iSCSI storage environment for my test lab and wanted to try FreeNAS as a possible option. I have a Dell PE2970 with a PERC RAID controller, 8GB RAM, 2 x 73GB drives and 5 x 146GB drives I would like to use and install on. I then have a couple of other Dell servers which will be my ESX hosts. I downloaded and installed FreeNAS on the machine but do not seem to be able to setup any volumes as it does not see the drives. The quick install guides walk you through the install of the product, but I am not seeing anything that explains how to setup the hardware. I would like to setup a R1 with the 2 smaller drives for the install and then use the remaining drives for the data. Can someone explain how the hardware needs to be setup in this sort of environment and what needs to be done to setup volumes once installed?

thanks,

 

[survive]

Hi aja44,

Ok, first thing is FreeNAS should really be installed to a USB key. That's what it's made to be run from....there's no reason you can't run it from a proper hard drive, but that burns up valuable controller ports that could be used for storage.

You need to figure out what sort of controller you have in the Dell and verify that FreeBSD (which FreeNAS is based on) supports it. Assuming you want to use ZFS, you should know that the dumber the controller the better. ZFS works best if it has full control of the drives and a plain old "dumb" HBA is the way to go for that. The upside for most users is that they don't have to spend the cash on a hardware RAID card, money that would be better spent on more RAM. In your case, since you have the controller already (and assuming it's supported) you can use it to make the array(s) or you can try and see if the controller can present each drive as an individual RAID-0 array and let ZFS create the storage pool out of that.

Take a look at the Dell and see what sort of controller it has....you could get the service tag off the back and plug it into the proper spot on Dell's support site and that should tell you how the box was originally shipped. Post back here with that info and we can help you figure out how to go from there.

-Will

 

[aja44]

Hi Will and thanks for the reply. The controller in a PERC5i. I have the two smaller drives in the box which are in a RAID1 that is where ESX4.1 is also installed. I downloaded and installed the virtual appliance version of the product.

 

[pirateghost]

Then you would have to present the RAW disks to the FREENAS VM. Not really the best option for FreeNAS IMO.
The PERC will work fine with FreeNAS, as I use 2 PERCs in my box with 8 disks on each controller.

If you want to play around with FreeNAS, I would suggest you install it to USB drive on the bare-metal. Dont use it in a hypervisor

 

[aja44]

pirateghost,

I did have it installed on baremetal the first time and could not figure out how to see the freespace. The only difference was that I created a R1 using the first 2 disks, would that have made a difference? I just created a bootable USB for FreeNAS using Universal USB Installer. Do I blow out all RAID volumes on the PERC or should I create a RAID volume before booting to the USB?

 

[pirateghost]

i would not run a RAID on the disks at all in the PERC BIOS. let the disks be presented naturally to the OS and utilize ZFS