Motherboard change on Dell 2950... Raid effects?

[epdavidson]

I am planning to upgrade the Mobo on my Dell 2950 from a gen II to a gen III so I can use 54xx Xeon processors. I am running FreeNAS 9.2.1.8 x64 and have (6) 2TB drives in a RAID Z1 configuration. I have replaced the Integrated raid controller on the 2950 with an integrated SAS controller. So no hardware raid. Everything has been working great. My question is: Will replacing the mobo cause me to lose my entire raid array? I intend to reconnect the SAS controller and boot to the same install of FreeNAS. Yes I have done quite a bit of searching but cant seem to get a definitive answer. Yes, I have everything backed up, but I'd like not to have to spend 10 hours moving 8TB of data. Any help, suggestions, thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[hugovsky]

No.

 

[epdavidson]

No.

No...meaning I wont lose my raid array?

 

[hugovsky]

.... My question is: Will replacing the mobo cause me to lose my entire raid array? ...

No, you will not lose your array. As long as drives are readable, you should be fine. If it makes you feel better, just wait for someone else to comment. ;)

 

[epdavidson]

No, you will not lose your array. As long as drives are readable, you should be fine. If it makes you feel better, just wait for someone else to comment. ;)

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it!

 

[cyberjock]

It will work just fine so long as you didn't do hardware RAID. Just plug the drives in and go. ;)

 

[epdavidson]

It will work just fine so long as you didn't do hardware RAID. Just plug the drives in and go. ;)

Thanks cyberjock. I was hoping that would be the case but wanted to get a couple more opinions. Thank you for your time!

 

[jmatt3685]

Hey EP, I'm looking at buying a 2950 off ebay and using freenas, like you did. So you just pulled out the raid card and put in a SAS controller? No flashing required??? What SAS controller did you get???

 

[epdavidson]

Jmatt, Yes, my 2950s were all GIIs and I wanted to use a faster processor. So I upgraded to GIII system boards, removed the PERC 5i controllers and replaced them with CR679 Poweredge PCI-E SAS RAID Controller PERC 6/IR E2K-UCS-61-B's. No muss, no fuss, no flashing. Got them on ebay for around $15/ea. I also wanted to get the SMART info, which to my knowledge, isn't possible with the PERC 5i in raid 5. The 6iR will only do raid 0 and 1. I use raid Z1 with freenas. I also have one 2950 with JBOD running NAS4FREE. I find N4F a bit easier to configure iSCSI, just my opinion. I get an email listing of the SMART info, pretty handy. Also, I believe you will have problems going from hard to software raid, and vice versa so be careful. Hope this helps.