HP DL380 G7 FreeNAS instead of Fedora

[Junicast]

Hi,

I've been running this server for about two years now and it still fulfills my needs hardware wise. Fedora is nice but I would really love to install FreeNAS 11.2. The server has an HP Smart Array P410i controller which needs to be replaced since it does not support IT mode. That's what I read.
What I also read is that people tend to use something like LSI 9211 which can be reflashed supporting IT mode so ZFS can be used without making use of the hardware raid capability of the hostadapter.

Is it true that it might be necessary to reflash / upgrade the hostadapter's firmware when I upgrade FreeNAS to a future version? If so, is there another option where I don't have to do that?

Thank you very much.

 

[kdragon75]

Is it true that it might be necessary to reflash / upgrade the hostadapter's firmware when I upgrade FreeNAS to a future version? If so, is there another option where I don't have to do that?

Once its in IT more, your set. With that said, its not a bad idea to keep your firmware updated.

 

[Junicast]

Is the 9211 really a good idea or is there a better option?
I would like to use SSD 6 x 500 GB as RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ1. The server has a total of 8 bays.

 

[kdragon75]

Are the SSDs 6Gb/s or 12Gb/s?

Is the 9211 really a good idea or is there a better option?

Better as in cheaper, faster, more compatible, or power efficient?

 

[Junicast]

I care for compatibility and performance but the price should not be much higher than the 9211. There are only 6 Gbps SSD.

 

[kdragon75]

Then the LSI 2008 based 9211-4i/8i is perfect

 

[HoneyBadger]

Then the LSI 2008 based 9211-4i/8i is perfect

With SSD based pools I'd start to look at SAS2308-based cards. Yes, your CPU will be doing the RAIDZ calculations, but the SoC still needs to shuffle traffic and with a larger number of SSDs the single core on the SAS2008 might actually start to become a bottleneck.

HP H220 is a SAS2308-based card and quite cheap.

Edit: The SAS2308 also has way better odds at actually passing the TRIM commands through to your SSDs as users have reported the SAS2008 ones failing to work even when using drives that should.