Stripe only option dell h730 RAID

[djnoah]

Hi,
I am running TrueNAS-12.0-U6 on a Dell R730 with an H730 raid controller.
I set the RAID controller to RAID 5 and built a virtual disk with the controller configuration
When I build a TrueNAS pool I have a single disk to choose from and the only option when defining the Data VDevs is "Stripe". But the TrueNAS UI makes it clear that Stripe can be a dangerous option. What can I do about this?
Cheers

 

[Samuel Tai]

Please don't try to run a HW RAID with TrueNAS.

What's all the noise about HBA's, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

This is relevant to FreeNAS and TrueNAS CORE. Some parts of it might also be relevant to Scale, but I don't really know how reliable the Linux drivers are. 1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with...

www.truenas.com

You'll need to replace your H730 with a plain HBA in IT mode, so TrueNAS can control your drives directly. Then you can create a RAIDZ1 pool. However, I would recommend a RAIDZ2 (equivalent of RAID6), because too many folks have lost data when their RAIDZ1 pools suffered 2 bad disks.

 

[danb35]

Samuel is right; you should replace the controller. The reason it's appearing the way that it is, is because you've created an array using the RAID controller, which is presented to the computer (and thus to TrueNAS) as though it were a single disk. And in that case, yes, a stripe is the only possible pool configuration.

 

[djnoah]

Thank you Samuel and Dan. There is a way to configure the H730 and put it in non-RAID mode. Would this work?

 

[Samuel Tai]

Thank you Samuel and Dan. There is a way to configure the H730 and put it in non-RAID mode. Would this work?

It may work for a while, but you will eventually lose data or experience weirdness like drives disappearing. Running your controller in JBOD mode isn't a long-term fix.

 

[jgreco]

Would this work?

Did you read the quoted article? It's literally written in response to that very question asked by someone else at one point, who, recollection says, had an H730.

 

[Ericloewe]

Seriously, just sell it and install an HBA330 mini (or more vanilla PCIe slot LSI SAS 9300 if you want to be 100% sure) and be done with this. Don't bother with any of the RAID stuff.

 

[neb50]

The H730 in HBA mode will work, but will limit the drive speeds to 150MBps. The HBA330 mini is a direct replacement and will work to control the drives at up to SAS3 speeds.

 

[jgreco]

The H730 in HBA mode will work, but will limit the drive speeds to 150MBps

We've previously determined this not to be true. It's the reason I wrote the HBA resource, and why I specifically called out needing to avoid RAID controllers that have been made into pseudo-HBA's but still use the same firmware/driver set as the RAID card.

 

[djnoah]

Thanks guys

 

[duder1982]

I know this is an older topic, but I have the same issue, but I don't believe I have a RAID controller or at least that I am not aware of.

Somewhat of a light bulb just went off. If I understand correctly, since I only have one drive, then stripe data is my only option, which would make since as there are no other drives to utilize RAID configuration for redundancy or back up.

 

[danb35]

If I understand correctly, since I only have one drive, then stripe data is my only option

You got it.