Help with server Dell T30 and Freenas

[Alexander Reyes]

Hello friends, I want to ask a question I hope you can help me, a couple of years ago the company where I work bought a Dell T30 server, which I converted into a NAS server with FREENAS, and I installed 3 HDDs of 4 TB each, achieving a space 12 TB storage, in addition to 1 TB that comes from the factory that is only for the system, the detail is that now I need to expand the storage, can I put more hard drives on this server?
I have seen that there are some cards to expand sata by means of pci-xpress but I do not know if the system (or the same server) supports more hard drives and more than 12 TB of storage, I hope you can help me, thank you.

 

[JohnDigital]

So you are running all your disks with no redundancy? You should take this chance to backup all of your data and rework your system with some redundancy if this in fact the case. The way you state it, if one of your drives fail you will lose all of your data. The easiest way might be to buy a giant USB3 drive. With the added bonus of always having this drive for a failsafe backup solution.

Now with that said if you add an HBA in IT mode you can add as many drives as the case will fit. You will also need some forward breakout cables allowing you to easily add 8 SATA drives as big as you want. Again, design this pool with redundancy in mind at least RAIDZ2, especially in a business environment.

About your current pool. What you need to do is copy off all important data off of your current pool. Do this however your most comfortable. Figure out how to rework your current drives into a pool with at least some redundancy, this is going to require you add two more 4TB drives in my estimation, plus whatever else you want to add. Lucky for you drives are becoming quite huge, so you can get quite a bit of storage over not so many drives.

 

[blanchet]

The DELL T30 supports up to 4x3.5" disks + 2x2.5" disks
So even if you buy an HBA you cannot install more disks in the server to expand the storage.

https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/en/uk/PowerEdge_T30_Spec_Sheet.pdf

You basically have two choices

• You can use larger disks. With two mirror vdev you can achieve 28 TB of useable space with 4 x 14TB disks
• You can buy another (used) server with more disks slots