SubnetMask
Contributor
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2017
- Messages
- 129
First, let me say I know that RAID controllers in general are taboo - they usually either don't allow for non RAID disks at all, or when they do, they usually don't properly pass the disks through, resulting in some things, such as SMART data, not working. The understandably default line is essentially 'Get a real HBA' - which in general, I agree with. And I have no intention of using any non-IT controller to run the data volumes for my FreeNAS.
That being said, my use case is slightly different than the usual ones with regards to the H730. As a as a continuation of or slight detour from my thread here, I'm looking into using a FC630 as my FreeNAS 'controller'. Given that the FC630 is a blade, your options for a controller for the internal drive bays are a 'bit' more limited than they are for a traditional rack server.
In the R620 that's currently my FreeNAS controller, I had a H310 that supported non-RAID/Passthrough, however, as I recall, the disks didn't get the SMART data properly passed through ({sarcasm]big surprise[/sarcasm]). I did get the internal 'S' controller seemingly working right with FreeNAS, but I abandoned that due to the 'unknowns' at the time related to moving my encrypted pools to a new build with the original config restored - I ended up just moving the USB stick from the previous machine over to the R620 and off I went.
That being said, I've done a bunch of reading, and most of what I've found here regarding the H730 is a few years old. And there seems to be a lot of conflicting, back and forth 'opinions' regarding the H730. Some say 'yes it works fine', while others say 'it doesn't work, you should NEVER use a PERC card'. It Is apparently on the BSD HCL, and it is also supported for use with VMWare vSAN, which I suspect is where the 'HBA Mode' comes from, as I'd imagine VMWare's vSAN probably wants the same level of access to the drives as FreeNAS does. As others in those older posts have said, the H730 has two 'personality' modes: RAID Controller and HBA. Now, to be clear, my intended use of the H730 is for the (two mirrored) FreeNAS boot disks only, not to serve many TB of storage over many disks, so performance isn't really a concern. One thing I had read is it seems they tended to peeter out under heavy load - just running the FreeNAS boot volumes isn't likely to put any measurable load on the the controller. The data volumes will all be served from my external enclosures via two LSI HBAs that I currently have in use in my R620, moved to the PCIe slots of the FX2s chassis should I migrate it over.
I've currently got a test instance of FreeNAS set up on a FC630, with the H730 in 'HBA mode', and the two 120GB SATA SSDs used for FreeNAS - everything seems to be working 100% as it should. The SSDs show up as da0 & da1, SMART is enabled on them and querying them from the console returns data, so the H730 does in fact seem to properly support FULLY passing the disks through in HBA mode, unlike setting the disks to 'Non-RAID disk' in the H310.
So has anyone had more recent experience with the H730 and FreeNAS? So far, on the surface, it seems like it'll be absolutely fine for what I want to use it for. The dilemma for me in this case is that I haven't gotten the blade that I would use for FreeNAS yet, so I need to determine what ill work properly so I know what I should order - I'm currently testing using one of my VMWare blades. In the FC630, there are several different configurations, all of which have different back planes and connection points on the MB. You could get the H730 slim with the 1.8" drive model, which required two CPUs and attaches to the motherboard between the CPUs. You can get the H730 mini, which is under the drive cage, and the ribbon cable for the backplane attaches on top of the H730 Mini's connector, or you can get one without ANY 'external' controller, that just uses the onboard 'S130' controller that I believe can be set to AHCI mode, which attaches to yet another place on the motherboard. I can't use the slim because I'm running with a single populated socket (And even if I could, if the H730 mini would work, so would the slim). That leaves the mini or none at all, but I have no way to test to be sure the the S130 would work with FreeNAS for the boot disks - Based on previous experience with the 'S' PERC cards, I believe they CAN be set to 'AHCI', so they function as nothing more then simple SATA ports. I know the H730 seems to be fine with it so far.
It seems that I'm in uncharted waters with using a FC630 in a FX2s chassis as a FreeNAS controller, although in theory, in the end, it shouldn't work any different than a Rx30 server would. Does anyone have any suggestions for tests that could put the FC630 under some real stress to see how it'll perform and such? Copying files around doesn't really seem to be a goo indicator because that can vary from OS to OS
That being said, my use case is slightly different than the usual ones with regards to the H730. As a as a continuation of or slight detour from my thread here, I'm looking into using a FC630 as my FreeNAS 'controller'. Given that the FC630 is a blade, your options for a controller for the internal drive bays are a 'bit' more limited than they are for a traditional rack server.
In the R620 that's currently my FreeNAS controller, I had a H310 that supported non-RAID/Passthrough, however, as I recall, the disks didn't get the SMART data properly passed through ({sarcasm]big surprise[/sarcasm]). I did get the internal 'S' controller seemingly working right with FreeNAS, but I abandoned that due to the 'unknowns' at the time related to moving my encrypted pools to a new build with the original config restored - I ended up just moving the USB stick from the previous machine over to the R620 and off I went.
That being said, I've done a bunch of reading, and most of what I've found here regarding the H730 is a few years old. And there seems to be a lot of conflicting, back and forth 'opinions' regarding the H730. Some say 'yes it works fine', while others say 'it doesn't work, you should NEVER use a PERC card'. It Is apparently on the BSD HCL, and it is also supported for use with VMWare vSAN, which I suspect is where the 'HBA Mode' comes from, as I'd imagine VMWare's vSAN probably wants the same level of access to the drives as FreeNAS does. As others in those older posts have said, the H730 has two 'personality' modes: RAID Controller and HBA. Now, to be clear, my intended use of the H730 is for the (two mirrored) FreeNAS boot disks only, not to serve many TB of storage over many disks, so performance isn't really a concern. One thing I had read is it seems they tended to peeter out under heavy load - just running the FreeNAS boot volumes isn't likely to put any measurable load on the the controller. The data volumes will all be served from my external enclosures via two LSI HBAs that I currently have in use in my R620, moved to the PCIe slots of the FX2s chassis should I migrate it over.
I've currently got a test instance of FreeNAS set up on a FC630, with the H730 in 'HBA mode', and the two 120GB SATA SSDs used for FreeNAS - everything seems to be working 100% as it should. The SSDs show up as da0 & da1, SMART is enabled on them and querying them from the console returns data, so the H730 does in fact seem to properly support FULLY passing the disks through in HBA mode, unlike setting the disks to 'Non-RAID disk' in the H310.
So has anyone had more recent experience with the H730 and FreeNAS? So far, on the surface, it seems like it'll be absolutely fine for what I want to use it for. The dilemma for me in this case is that I haven't gotten the blade that I would use for FreeNAS yet, so I need to determine what ill work properly so I know what I should order - I'm currently testing using one of my VMWare blades. In the FC630, there are several different configurations, all of which have different back planes and connection points on the MB. You could get the H730 slim with the 1.8" drive model, which required two CPUs and attaches to the motherboard between the CPUs. You can get the H730 mini, which is under the drive cage, and the ribbon cable for the backplane attaches on top of the H730 Mini's connector, or you can get one without ANY 'external' controller, that just uses the onboard 'S130' controller that I believe can be set to AHCI mode, which attaches to yet another place on the motherboard. I can't use the slim because I'm running with a single populated socket (And even if I could, if the H730 mini would work, so would the slim). That leaves the mini or none at all, but I have no way to test to be sure the the S130 would work with FreeNAS for the boot disks - Based on previous experience with the 'S' PERC cards, I believe they CAN be set to 'AHCI', so they function as nothing more then simple SATA ports. I know the H730 seems to be fine with it so far.
It seems that I'm in uncharted waters with using a FC630 in a FX2s chassis as a FreeNAS controller, although in theory, in the end, it shouldn't work any different than a Rx30 server would. Does anyone have any suggestions for tests that could put the FC630 under some real stress to see how it'll perform and such? Copying files around doesn't really seem to be a goo indicator because that can vary from OS to OS