So when I pourchased my server (Dell R520) it came with two emulex LPe12000 8gb HBAs with fiber transceivers. I was able to find windows drivers for my windows machine from the dell website and dell lists this card as being compatible with FreeBSD on there website so I'm wondering what I'm missing here. I've tried running ocs_fc_load="YES" however after a reboot nothing comes up. I have also seen some talk about emulex not being the most compatible with FreeBSD however since its listed as supported I'm a bit confused. Since there are linux drivers available should I maybe try migrating to Scale for possible better driver support?
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TrueNAS on an Emulex LPE12000 not showing up
- Thread starter Massako
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jgreco
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TrueNAS is not the same thing as FreeBSD. FreeBSD is a general purpose UNIX operating system and contains driver support for many devices that may not be quite up to snuff. You really need HBA's that are 100% reliable. Please see the linked article at
www.truenas.com
Let's not quibble over the fact that this article is targeted at RAID controllers -- the same driver and reliability issues apply to FC HBA's. They're not LSI SAS HBA's and are not likely to be 100% compatible with TrueNAS and ZFS, which need that last measure of compatibility.
Additionally, FC is a choke point. Unlike SAS, your drives are on a shared medium and you are subject to the issues briefly discussed in
www.truenas.com
You will run into problems during scrubs or resilvers, so it is suggested that you ditch the FC HBA's and move to a SAS topology.
What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?
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, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...
www.truenas.com
Let's not quibble over the fact that this article is targeted at RAID controllers -- the same driver and reliability issues apply to FC HBA's. They're not LSI SAS HBA's and are not likely to be 100% compatible with TrueNAS and ZFS, which need that last measure of compatibility.
Additionally, FC is a choke point. Unlike SAS, your drives are on a shared medium and you are subject to the issues briefly discussed in
r720xd - 3x qle2460 - dell mds3600f - DS4700 - error at disk size
Hello everyone, Really love truenas and the whole ecosystem. New here and i want your help. I have a r720xd with 2x e5-2680v2 and 128gb of ram, 26 hdds 1,2 tb and i am trying to connect 2 old storages i own. One dell mds3600f and one IBM DS4700. I am using 3 FC cards qle2460. The problem is that...
www.truenas.com
You will run into problems during scrubs or resilvers, so it is suggested that you ditch the FC HBA's and move to a SAS topology.
As far as all my storage devices they are all controlled individually by my raid card in it mode.TrueNAS is not the same thing as FreeBSD. FreeBSD is a general purpose UNIX operating system and contains driver support for many devices that may not be quite up to snuff. You really need HBA's that are 100% reliable. Please see the linked article at
What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?
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, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...
Let's not quibble over the fact that this article is targeted at RAID controllers -- the same driver and reliability issues apply to FC HBA's. They're not LSI SAS HBA's and are not likely to be 100% compatible with TrueNAS and ZFS, which need that last measure of compatibility.
Additionally, FC is a choke point. Unlike SAS, your drives are on a shared medium and you are subject to the issues briefly discussed in
r720xd - 3x qle2460 - dell mds3600f - DS4700 - error at disk size
Hello everyone, Really love truenas and the whole ecosystem. New here and i want your help. I have a r720xd with 2x e5-2680v2 and 128gb of ram, 26 hdds 1,2 tb and i am trying to connect 2 old storages i own. One dell mds3600f and one IBM DS4700. I am using 3 FC cards qle2460. The problem is that...
You will run into problems during scrubs or resilvers, so it is suggested that you ditch the FC HBA's and move to a SAS topology.
I'm looking at using the two cards to setup a direct connection from my main computer to my truenas server in addition to the gigabit network it is currently living on.
Unless I'm miss interpreting are you thinking I'm trying to run additional drives off of a FC? I was only aware of SPF+ for networking not for storage attachments.
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Can you explain "nothing comes up"?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you might be under the (mistaken) assumption that these will be recognized and presented in the TrueNAS UI as if they were network cards. They won't.
What you have are Fibre Channel HBAs, which don't run on the IP network (yes I know FCIP and IPFC both exist, don't @ me ;) ) and will require additional off-the-books tuning to make work, regardless if you choose TrueNAS CORE or SCALE. It's a lot closer to treating your TrueNAS machine as a disk shelf, with the FC HBA in your client system being the "storage controller" there.
It's only usable for block storage, so if you're hoping to be able to access existing shares and files you'll want to look elsewhere. However, it will give you a great way to carve out a chunk of your TrueNAS machine as a ZVOL and have it appear as a local drive on that one Windows machine.
I'd suggest you look at the 10GbE networking primer to accomplish what you're looking for here, as it's probably more in line with what you're hoping to achieve.
10 Gig Networking Primer
This is a discussion of high speed networking for newcomers, with specific emphasis on practical small- to medium-scale deployments for home labs or small office users. It originated with a forum thread located here that has many pages of...
www.truenas.com
Of course, I might have been wrong in that assumption, invalidating my entire post. It is late here, after all. ;)
Ok yea I guess I wasnt aware that FC's were different from traditional NIC'sCan you explain "nothing comes up"?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you might be under the (mistaken) assumption that these will be recognized and presented in the TrueNAS UI as if they were network cards. They won't.
What you have are Fibre Channel HBAs, which don't run on the IP network (yes I know FCIP and IPFC both exist, don't @ me ;) ) and will require additional off-the-books tuning to make work, regardless if you choose TrueNAS CORE or SCALE. It's a lot closer to treating your TrueNAS machine as a disk shelf, with the FC HBA in your client system being the "storage controller" there.
It's only usable for block storage, so if you're hoping to be able to access existing shares and files you'll want to look elsewhere. However, it will give you a great way to carve out a chunk of your TrueNAS machine as a ZVOL and have it appear as a local drive on that one Windows machine.
I'd suggest you look at the 10GbE networking primer to accomplish what you're looking for here, as it's probably more in line with what you're hoping to achieve.
10 Gig Networking Primer
This is a discussion of high speed networking for newcomers, with specific emphasis on practical small- to medium-scale deployments for home labs or small office users. It originated with a forum thread located here that has many pages of...
Of course, I might have been wrong in that assumption, invalidating my entire post. It is late here, after all. ;)
either way, to get around this I just purchased two Chelsio 110-1155-31 10Gbe cards with some transceivers for $40 so hopefully those are more appropriate for my use case which is to have a direct 10gbe connection to my main pc from my server seperate from my traditional 1gbe network which is used for everything else and internet.
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- Feb 6, 2014
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Assuming those are Dell part number 084FDM, I believe you've just purchased another set of FC HBAs unfortunately.
ugh wait what? I looked online at the data sheet and it listed them as 10gb ethernet HBAs as well as on the listing but that is def the part number. I also googled the transceivers they come with and they come up as 10gb ethernet transceivers.
Unless I'm wrong in which case I have literally no idea which cards to buy because they all say fiber channel which i thought just meant they supported 850nm fiber communications. I read through the whole 10gb starter thing as well and didnt see anything that would have jumped out at me about these cards or what to avoid as far as fiber channels.
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Just following up after receiving the cards. plugging them in they instantly show up as 10gbe network interfaces
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