Re-purposing SAN based on Supermicro

[jamesmcg]

I currently have two SAN from a vendor that has all but abandoned their clients (support wise). I'll be replacing them with something else for production, however the hardware is fantastic. They are Supermicro based dual controller units, (similar, not exactly this one linked) with SSDs and I really want to re-purpose them. Is it possible to use TrueNAS for this? I'm assuming yes for a single controller and disk, but how about dual controller?!

 

[HoneyBadger]

I can probably guess the vendor.

TrueNAS CORE (the free version) doesn't have support for HA controller heads unfortunately - and I'm not sure if they'll support HA in the paid version without their own hardware being in play. The TrueNAS hardware might also be identical (or have sufficiently similar hardware to interact with the middleware in the same manner) but I can't make that statement definitively.

What can you tell us about the hardware itself? If it's who I think, and the hardware is out of warranty/looking to be repurposed, you're probably dealing with a hybrid pool using Seagate/HGST spinning disks and front-ended by HGST Ultrastar SSDs, with LSI SAS devices. Hardware is very solid; but the challenges of "is it exactly what's needed" could pose a challenge for the middleware.

Tagging an iX rep in here - @morganL

 

[jamesmcg]

It's very similar to this unit:

2028R-DE2CR24L | SuperStorage | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

24x SSD with dual Xeon based controllers. It's not EOL yet, however we have no intention of renewing support when it comes up in a few months. ATROCIOUS excuse for 'support' from these clowns.

We have a hybrid unit as well, that is EOL. I plan to yank the SSD from it and go all spinning disk for a low value Veeam linux backup repo in a different project.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hmm. Those units might have gone to NVDIMM SLOG devices which could be harder to support.

Hardware will be great but the middleware/software support could be a challenge - while it might work and there's nothing wrong, the question from iX's mind might be more of "can we actually take your money for running our software on unvalidated hardware, and have a clear conscience about it?"

I mean, that'd be my stance - I'd hate to have sold you software that won't work out of the box, or even worse looks like it works but surfaces some weird bug down the road.

 

[morganL]

HA systems are complex.. we can't sell the Enterprise edition with HA as software only. It requires extensive platform testing to be reliable and hardware variations make this too complex. Suggest re-use as a single controller system with a local spare controller.

 

[jamesmcg]

HA systems are complex.. we can't sell the Enterprise edition with HA as software only. It requires extensive platform testing to be reliable and hardware variations make this too complex. Suggest re-use as a single controller system with a local spare controller.

Gotcha! Sounds good, this was the route I figured I'd end up going anyway.