Switching Controllers

[Roman217]

I currently have FreeNAS running as VM on an ESXi host with a m1015 passed through. It has been working without issue for the past year. Soon though I will be re-purposing some of the machines and won't be able to use the M1015 anymore since it doesn't fit into a 2u chassis.

Instead of the m1015 I want to use the 6 sata ports I have on the motherboard(Supermicro X9SCM). Is there any issue with switching controllers? Do I need to make sure the drives are still in the same order? Can I just plug them in and auto import the pool?

Thanks in advance!
Roman

 

[jgreco]

The M1015 has a low profile bracket available. That's still an option.

As long as the M1015 is flashed to IT mode, it is basically just acting as a dumb SATA controller for purposes of this discussion. Verify that your pool is built on the GPT labels... "zpool status" shows all the disks as gptid/randomfoo rather than daX or whatever. With GPT, the port the drive is attached to is irrelevant.

 

[Roman217]

Here are the results from zpool status:

Code:

  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 3h32m with 0 errors on Sun Jan 12 03:32:46 2014   
config:                                                                       
                                                                               
        NAME                                            STATE    READ WRITE CKS
UM                                                                             
        FreeNAS                                        ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
          raidz2-0                                      ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
            gptid/0e0641e4-8ad9-11e2-ad65-000c2982e5f8  ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
            gptid/0e5c95bb-8ad9-11e2-ad65-000c2982e5f8  ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
            gptid/0eba7a05-8ad9-11e2-ad65-000c2982e5f8  ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
            gptid/0f131ec6-8ad9-11e2-ad65-000c2982e5f8  ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
            gptid/0f6841b5-8ad9-11e2-ad65-000c2982e5f8  ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
            gptid/0fc16d09-8ad9-11e2-ad65-000c2982e5f8  ONLINE      0    0   
0                                                                             
                                                                               
errors: No known data errors

The problem with the m1015 in the 2u chassis is that the sas cables face upwards and I haven't been able to find a 90 degree breakout cable that works. I did try the monoprice right angle cables but those don't work since they turn towards the card instead of away from it, if that makes any sense. I would have to get an LSI 9211 since that one has connectors that face out the back.
Thanks,
Roman