Setting up the drives on my HP ProLiant Gen8

[paradoxiom]

Hey everyone,

I'm not new to modifying my own PC etc, and the Gen8 was mostly an impulse buy, but I'm glad I bought it because it's a fun project - mainly I plan to use it as a home media / storage / cloud server, but there's probably lots of other things I haven't though about yet I could use it for.

Anyway my main question is regarding how I want to set up my drives and the RAID for them.
If you aren't familiar with the Gen8 then it has 4 bays as standard. I plan to put 4x 6TB WD Reds in there.

I want to use a SAS/SATA PCIE raid card (something like this? if not, any suggestions for my use?) and also stick that in and connect drives up to that using a custom mounting bracket that someone has created here, among other cool mods for the Gen8.

Now, I want to use RAIDZ2, how much TB of drive space will the second RAID array from the PCIE card need to be in order for RAIDZ2 to work with the 4x 6TB drives? Or is it simply not possible to do it like this using two different raid controllers?

Thanks in advance,
para

 

[hugovsky]

Welcome. HighPoint and/or RAID controllers are not good with ZFS. You should not use onboard smart array. 8GB ECC is minimum if you love your data. Take a look at this threads to start with:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...out-that-lsi-card-join-the-crowd.11901/unread

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/highpoint-controller-info.8217/

 

[paradoxiom]

Hi,

Thanks for the response.

I've seen the PDF before and a couple of the other threads but I didn't know about the RAID card sugestion, theIBM ServeRaid M1015 yes?

If I buy that, (this one look good/price?) is it possible to do what I want as described in my first post?

>8GB ECC is minimum if you love your data
I have 16GB on the way to be installed today actually :)

Thanks again,
para

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi,

Thanks for the response.
Are you saying that I shouldn't use a PCIE raid card in it? I've seen people doing just that in a lot of places, what do you mean exactly by "not good" with ZFS?
Edit: *Nevermind I saw in one of those topics it explains how they are just simply bad products and not good with smart, so I guess that's where you got smart from when I never mentioned it.

Is what I want to do possible or not? That's what I would really like to know. If it is, is the PCIE RAID card I want to get the "IBM ServeRAID M1015"? I can find it on ebay from China(sketchy??) pretty easily. If I have that and breakout cables etc etc will I be able to do what I want?

>You should not use onboard smart array.
*I don't know what you mean by this, I didn't mention smart?

>8GB ECC is minimum if you love your data
I have 16GB

Thanks again,
para

He means the onboard SATA ports. I imagine the server has four of them, at least...

 

[paradoxiom]

He means the onboard SATA ports. I imagine the server has four of them, at least...

I edited my post while you were posting, but I believe the board has only a single Mini-SAS header on it, hence the need for a card.

 

[Ericloewe]

I edited my post while you were posting, but I believe the board has only a single Mini-SAS header on it, hence the need for a card.

No need for a card. It's probably still SATA. Just get an SAS breakout cable.

If that doesn't work, then you can spend money on SATA/SAS controllers.

Edit: In the latter case, you still need the breakout cable, so no harm done.

 

[paradoxiom]

No need for a card. It's probably still SATA. Just get an SAS breakout cable.

If that doesn't work, then you can spend money on SATA/SAS controllers.

Edit: In the latter case, you still need the breakout cable, so no harm done.

I can only find SAS breakout cables that are SAS-> 4x SATA, and as there are 4 drives in the front of the bay as stock, won't that be using all 4 of them already?

Thanks again

 

[danb35]

If the board has a Mini-SAS connector, you should be able to use a breakout cable to get four SATA ports out of that.

 

[Ericloewe]

How many drives do you want? You've only mentioned four so far.

If you need more SATA connectivity, an M1015/LSI SAS 9211/SAS 9207 is the way to go.

 

[paradoxiom]

How many drives do you want? You've only mentioned four so far.

If you need more SATA connectivity, an M1015/LSI SAS 9211/SAS 9207 is the way to go.

>I plan to put 4x 6TB WD Reds in there.
>I want to use a SAS/SATA PCIE raid card (something like this? if not, any suggestions for my use?) and also stick that in and connect drives up to that

I only want to add enough to be able to use the 4x 6TB drives in RAIDZ2, with the additional ones for the redundancy part so I can use the full 4x 6TB drives for storage space, nobody has told me yet whether or not what I want to do here is possible, could someone please just tell me if it is?

And if it is, what capacity of drives do I need to add for the additional redundancy part, I think I need up to at least 6TB, is that correct?

Thanks again,
para

 

[depasseg]

I'm confused. That chassis holds 4 drives. Unless you are planning to add some external expansion, or lay the drives outside the chassis, I don't see how you plan to get "4x 6TB drives in RAIDZ2, with the additional ones for the redundancy part so I can use the full 4x 6TB drives for storage space". RAID Z2 with 4 drives will give you 2 drives worth of usable space. To get 4 drives worth of usable space, you would need a total of 6 drives.

 

[paradoxiom]

I'm confused. That chassis holds 4 drives. Unless you are planning to add some external expansion, or lay the drives outside the chassis, I don't see how you plan to get "4x 6TB drives in RAIDZ2, with the additional ones for the redundancy part so I can use the full 4x 6TB drives for storage space". RAID Z2 with 4 drives will give you 2 drives worth of usable space. To get 4 drives worth of usable space, you would need a total of 6 drives.

Yes, I know, in my previous posts I explained how additional drives can be mounted on custom made brackets inside the Gen8.

 

[hugovsky]

Your server does have a SmartArray card(is this your server?), right? It's where your drives are connected. You shouldn't use it with freenas. Freenas should connect directly to drives. SmartArray makes you use some kind of RAID before whatever OS you install. So, I think your best option is to get some M1015/LSI SAS 9211/SAS 9207 card as @Ericloewe suggested. As per your server's datasheet, you have ECC support and probably are using it. That's a plus.

 

[depasseg]

If you want 4 x usable drive space in RAID Z2, you will need 2 more of the same size drives (for a total of 6).

 

[paradoxiom]

If you want 4 x usable drive space in RAID Z2, you will need 2 more of the same size drives (for a total of 6).

Thank you.

When you say the additional two drives should be the same size, as I will have four 6TB drives, do the two additional need to be 6TB each, or can they be 3TB+3TB?

And so finally, if I get the IBM ServeRaid M1015, add the two additional drives, I can then use the front 4 6TB drives for storage and have the ones hooked up to the M1015 for the redundancy in RAIDz2 together with FreeNAS?

I just want to be sure I can do what I want before I make the purchase because the M1015 is a bit pricey.

Thanks again.

 

[depasseg]

They all need to be the same size. Otherwise it will use only the smallest amount of space on 1 drive x the number of drives. So if you only added 2 x3TB drives, you would only have 4 x 3TB worth of usable space. I suggest reading Cyberjock's ZFS Guide.

It doesn't matter how the drives are connected. And the parity (12 TB) and data (24TB) will be spread across all 6 drives (the drives aren't dedicated to data or parity).

ebay has the 1015's (or Dell equivalents) for $80.

 

[paradoxiom]

They all need to be the same size. Otherwise it will use only the smallest amount of space on 1 drive x the number of drives. So if you only added 2 x3TB drives, you would only have 4 x 3TB worth of usable space. I suggest reading Cyberjock's ZFS Guide.

It doesn't matter how the drives are connected. And the parity (12 TB) and data (24TB) will be spread across all 6 drives (the drives aren't dedicated to data or parity).

ebay has the 1015's (or Dell equivalents) for $80.

Thanks, exactly what I needed to know - although I'm pretty sure even a single 6TB WD Red is too big to mount internally even with the bracket, I might end up just using raidz1 due to lack of internal space in the Gen8

 

[SweetAndLow]

You keep referring to the parity drives as though they are somehow different. This isn't how it works. All drivers in a vdev have some parity information on them when using raidz2. They also all have your data on them. If you want 24TB of total storage you need 6x6TB in raidz2. This will get you a little less than 20TiB after converting from TB to TiB and counting for swap space. Remember usable storage is different than manufacture reported storage.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Thanks, exactly what I needed to know - although I'm pretty sure even a single 6TB WD Red is too big to mount internally even with the bracket, I might end up just using raidz1 due to lack of internal space in the Gen8

You shouldn't be using raidz1 with drives that large. You will probably see a read error when rebuilding and lose your entire pool. You should do more reading on the forums about this.

 

[paradoxiom]

You keep referring to the parity drives as though they are somehow different. This isn't how it works. All drivers in a vdev have some parity information on them when using raidz2. They also all have your data on them. If you want 24TB of total storage you need 6x6TB in raidz2. This will get you a little less than 20TiB after converting from TB to TiB and counting for swap space. Remember usable storage is different than manufacture reported storage.

Thanks, I knew this but forgot at some point I think. So I can just raid-z2 the 4x 6TB drives and I won't actually 'lose' 12TB from the 2 drives being 'used' to make it raid-z2, as the parity is across all drives aswell as data?

Well, that makes things a lot better, if I have things right.