kjparenteau
Explorer
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 70
Greetings! I have been a long time user of FreeNAS, and my current system (Frankenstein build) has been cobbled together over the years, but recently I was able to get some new enterprise grade server hardware finally and I am now in need of some advice. Heres what I have...
R720xd, 12x 3.5" bays in the front with 2x 2.5" flex bays in the rear
2x CPU E5-2630 v2 @ 2.60GHz
384GB RAM
PERC H710 Mini
12x 6TB SATA
2x 256GB Samsung 860 EVO
From what I am seeing and now understanding, the H710 doesn't support JBOD natively. My Frankenstein build has an IT Mode LSI 9211-8i SAS SATA 8-port PCI-E 6Gb/s Controller Card, but it only supports 8 SATA ports with the cabling I have. It looks like the card itself can support more disks than that, but I am not sure of the cabling that I would need to make it connect to the backplane of the 720xd...
Ultimately, I don't want a solution that has a performance impact, I want native JBOD passthrough so FreeNAS and ZFS can work the magic. I would prefer to use the LSI 9211-8i card I have (I would purchase a 2nd one for this new server) since it's been rock solid, but not sure how many disks it handles, what size disks it supports, and even more importantly, what cables I can use to connect to the R720xd to make this a clean build... If I need a different card, please point me in the right direction for something comparable. If I need some kind of cable or expansion card to connect all these drives, please let me know what I need. This is a new venture for me trying to bypass the native Dell raid controllers.
Ideally, I want the FreeNAS OS on the 2x Samsung 860 SSD's mirrored, and then the rest just pass through so FreeNAS can use them as ZFS RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 storage.
Thank you in advance for any advice, please don't burn me too bad for ignorance. :) Hopefully it is just another LSI 9211-8i card and a special cable to make this all work!
R720xd, 12x 3.5" bays in the front with 2x 2.5" flex bays in the rear
2x CPU E5-2630 v2 @ 2.60GHz
384GB RAM
PERC H710 Mini
12x 6TB SATA
2x 256GB Samsung 860 EVO
From what I am seeing and now understanding, the H710 doesn't support JBOD natively. My Frankenstein build has an IT Mode LSI 9211-8i SAS SATA 8-port PCI-E 6Gb/s Controller Card, but it only supports 8 SATA ports with the cabling I have. It looks like the card itself can support more disks than that, but I am not sure of the cabling that I would need to make it connect to the backplane of the 720xd...
Ultimately, I don't want a solution that has a performance impact, I want native JBOD passthrough so FreeNAS and ZFS can work the magic. I would prefer to use the LSI 9211-8i card I have (I would purchase a 2nd one for this new server) since it's been rock solid, but not sure how many disks it handles, what size disks it supports, and even more importantly, what cables I can use to connect to the R720xd to make this a clean build... If I need a different card, please point me in the right direction for something comparable. If I need some kind of cable or expansion card to connect all these drives, please let me know what I need. This is a new venture for me trying to bypass the native Dell raid controllers.
Ideally, I want the FreeNAS OS on the 2x Samsung 860 SSD's mirrored, and then the rest just pass through so FreeNAS can use them as ZFS RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 storage.
Thank you in advance for any advice, please don't burn me too bad for ignorance. :) Hopefully it is just another LSI 9211-8i card and a special cable to make this all work!
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