LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2208

[Oko]

On one my file servers currently running Scientific Linux 6.5 I am hitting a serious kernel bug. Namely network connections decays and the file server gets of the network. I have filed the bug report with RedHat. If you wonder the server has Intel 82574L Dual-Port Gigabit controller. To make matters worse the file server is of the site hosting distributed user account of a small group of developers who typically experience the above as their inability log in into any of the machines in that particular facility as LDAP hangs due to unavailability of home directories. The solution is that I have to drive 50 miles and reboot file server (restarting network just exposes kernel errors) which might take a long time since the server has 20 TB of data.

Long story short after I have done this three times in the past and this morning the decision has been made that SL is going away. I am seriously thinking of using FreeNAS based on my experience on two other large file servers (specifically bought to run FreeNAS and ZFS).

The server is currently configured as RAID 6 and LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2208. Does anyone have experience with FreeNAS and hardware RAID? Obviously I am thinking of using UFS not ZFS. I just have no time to order SATA dom and HBA controller. In particular how is integration of FreeNAS with Mega Storage CLI or even better that graphical one.

 

[jgreco]

Long story short, UFS is going away and ZFS is here to stay. The 2208 is a great controller but not really for FreeNAS.

Using ZFS with a hardware RAID controller is a bad idea, especially if you use the controller's RAID feature.

 

[Oko]

Thank you so much for your quick replay! I hope it was clear from my post that I had no intension to use ZFS on the top of the hardware RAID. I am sad to hear that you feel that UFS and FreeNAS are not really good choices when it comes to hardware RAID but your post really helped with the decision process.