SOLVED Raid-Controller - best practice and recommendations

[Gen8 Runner]

Hey everyone,
i now also want to reduce my hardware and virtualise FreeNAS in ESXI on an X11SCA-F. Two Servers 24/7 are quite hungry for electricity, for this reason now i want everything on one ESXI host.

Now i already have my pool (7 Seagate Ironwolf) HDD's connected to virtualised FreeNAS by an M1015 Controller. That works perfectly fine and smooth, without any faults and problems.

But i want a hardware-raid for ESXI, to have higher redundancy. What is your recommendation regarding this? Use two seperate RAID-Controllers for the two ESXI SSD's and the M1015 Controller only for FreeNAS?
Or do you know any RAID-Controller-Cards, where you can choose which disks you just want to passthrough and which you want to have as RAID1?

Brgds and thanks for your advise

 

[artlessknave]

recommendation for hardware raid for freenas and ZFS: Don't. at all. ever. period. hard stop. you will have a bad time.

that said, I'm not clear what you are trying to do, if you already have freenas virtualized, what are you trying to change? you only list one server so dunno what you are trying to consolidate.
if you put 2 SSDs on 2 separate raid controller...you would have no redundancy at all, making the raid controllers pointless.
it sounds like you want 1 raid controller for esx boot/storage, and then your m1015 passed thru to freenas.
note that while you can use straight raid for esx boot fine, using raid without cache for VM storage has a significnat risk of corrupting your VMs if they are running and the power dies.

 

[Gen8 Runner]

recommendation for hardware raid for freenas and ZFS: Don't. at all. ever. period. hard stop. you will have a bad time.

that said, I'm not clear what you are trying to do, if you already have freenas virtualized, what are you trying to change? you only list one server so dunno what you are trying to consolidate.
if you put 2 SSDs on 2 separate raid controller...you would have no redundancy at all, making the raid controllers pointless.
it sounds like you want 1 raid controller for esx boot/storage, and then your m1015 passed thru to freenas.
note that while you can use straight raid for esx boot fine, using raid without cache for VM storage has a significnat risk of corrupting your VMs if they are running and the power dies.

I know, my problem is not as easy to describe.
So here again...

My wish:
ONE Raid-Controller, where i can passthrough the FreeNAS Drives via ESXI to the FreeNAS VM (For example: SATA Port 1-8 Passthrough, NO Hardware-Raid, Nothing). SATA 9 & 10: Hardware-Raid Raid1 (Mirror)).

But i think that controller doesn't exist. I know, that FreeNAS doesn't need and should NEVER be used with a Hardware-Raid, for this reason i hope, that a controller exists, which can do upper case (Every single Port configurable).

If not, i have to accept the additional power-consumption and use the M1015 in IT Mode only for passthrough to FreeNAS (like at the moment) and i need to buy a second RAID-Controller for a Hardware-Raid for my ESXI VM's Storage (the both SSD).

 

[artlessknave]

no, you cannot pass thru part of a pci card. you will need one raid card and one HBA. the power usage of the m1015 is negligible compared to your spinning disks.

"buy a second RAID controller" you already have one RAID controller? why would you need a second?

 

[Gen8 Runner]

no, you cannot pass thru part of a pci card. you will need one raid card and one HBA. the power usage of the m1015 is negligible compared to your spinning disks.

"buy a second RAID controller" you already have one RAID controller? why would you need a second?

Ah okay, either completely or nothing. That was my question...

Keep the M1015 for the PCI Passthrough to the FreeNAS VM.
And one Hardware-Raid-Controller for a Raid1-Hardware-Raid for the ESXI VM's SSD's (PFSense, FreeNAS, Windows, Ubuntu...).
ESXI doesn't offer Soft-Raid, for this Reason i need to mirror the SSD's with a hardware-raid.

 

[artlessknave]

again, note that without cache on your raid controller a power loss could corrupt your VMs. otherwise looks like you've got it.