TrueNAS Not Detecting Drives on Supermicro Storage SuperServer 32 Bay

[_Cheph_]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to TrueNAS and have installed the TrueNAS Scale on a Supermicro 32 bay storage server, Despite multiple troubleshooting attempts, TrueNAS is not detecting our 12TB and 6TB hard drives.

Server and Setup Details:

• Server Model: Supermicro Storage SuperServer with 32 Bays
• TrueNAS Version: TrueNAS SCALE 22.12.3.3 (Fresh Install)
• Installation drive: USB device (was first installed onto a raid drive on the device and as I saw there would be issue with having a another raid software used at teh same time so it was removed and placed onto the USB device for test phase)
• Hard Drives: Multiple drives with capacities of 12TB and 6TB, formatted as exFAT (even thought they are exFAT drives they still should be detected as storage at least)
• BIOS Settings: Set to AHCI mode
• Additional Details: Drives are powered, have been tested to be functional, and are recognized in the BIOS.

• Despite these efforts, the drives still do not appear in the TrueNAS interface or shell.
  
  
• Is there any known compatibility issue with TrueNAS and the Supermicro Storage SuperServer 32 Bay or large capacity drives? is could there be Controller Compatibility issues?
  
  
• Could the formatting exFAT of the drives be affecting their detection in TrueNAS?
  
  
• Are there additional troubleshooting steps or commands that can be recommended to identify and resolve this issue?
  
  
• would installing it into a SSD thats in the bay be more reliable and work? are there any particular BIOS settings that I need to check?

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance!

 

[Arwen]

We need the storage controller(s) details, including vendor & model. Plus, if the Storage SuperServer has a SAS Expander back plane. A link to the vendor's web page that describes your device exactly would be helpful. I poked around but could not find any that matched 32 x 3.5" HDD slots.

Some types of disk controllers have built in RAID. These don't work with ZFS & TrueNAS. Some can be converted in to HBA, (simple pass through Host Bus Adapters). The symptom you describe where you see no disks can mean you have a hardware RAID controller which requires building a RAID set before the OS can see the storage. Except that ZFS does not want hardware RAID.

Also, this can be helpful;
lspci -v

 

[PhilD13]

More info on the system, backplane, and motherboard would be helpful

Some motherboards have RAID chips built in. If the backplane cable(s) are connected to the onboard connectors as it sounds like they are from your description, then they are likely connected to the onboard RAID chip and very likely won't work or won't work without more effort. Some onboard chips can be flashed to HBA as Arwen said, or you can try setting the RAID controller to JBOD mode (pasthrough mode) which should work if the chip supports that mode. Or get an LSI PCIe card that is already flashed to HBA/IT mode and connect the backplane cable(s) and boot drive/mirror to the card.

I would also think about booting a live linux distribution from a usb stick and using dd from the command line to wipe any existing partitions off the drives. Be sure to identify the boot drive(s) first so you don't erase them. I found on my test system that truenas does not always see used drives that have existing and formatted partitions on them and if the drives had been in a md raid array the underlying linux system will see that and cause issues as well.