HPE P222 Controller and FreeNAS

[VladimirK]

Hello. I somehow keep my server on track (HP ProLiant Gen 8), and everything is running just fine. There are 4x 3TB Hard Drives in RAID 5 Array driven by HPE Smart Array P222 Controller.

- Wanted to test drive failure today, turned off server and pulled one drive out. Turned back on, files were there, and i could access server's interface through my browser. First thing i noticed was: there was no red alert that one HDD is missing. Light was green, and saying "everything is OK". Well, in panic i turned off server, reattached HDD, it took 3 hours to rebuild and now everything is working like before.

So my question is: why FreeNas said "everything is OK" when one drive was missing, and how to enable notifications for failed drives?

(earlier, while i didnt have P222, red/orange light was active from time to time, telling me various warnings)

Thank you, i hope you understand this "problem".

 

[kdragon75]

There are 4x 3TB Hard Drives in RAID 5 Array driven by HPE Smart Array P222 Controller.

This is exactly why. FreeNAS uses ZFS, ZFS is a complex and robust SOFTWARE RAID. By using a hardware RAID controller, your hiding the disks and anything that might be wrong with them! You need to remove the RAID card and replace it with an HBA card so FreeNAS can directly access each disk. This means moving all of your data off the server, installing the new HBA and rebuilding your pool as a RAIDz1 (like RAID5) or with only 4 disks a set of striped mirrors (like RAID10). Your setup is extremely dangerous as you have just found out.

 

[VladimirK]

Well, when Nas Expert says - i will listen to you and do the thing. Can you just please give me a hint about

installing the new HBA and rebuilding your pool as a RAIDz1

?

***oh silly me, i googled it a bit...***

Which card you recommend? thank you

 

[kdragon75]

Almost any card based on the LSI 2008 chip. You may want to o a bit of research on this as HP has a bad habit of running the fans at full speed if non-HP cards are used.

Thanks for taking the time to search!

 

[VladimirK]

Almost any card based on the LSI 2008 chip. You may want to o a bit of research on this as HP has a bad habit of running the fans at full speed if non-HP cards are used.

Thanks for taking the time to search!

And thank You, my dear friend, for taking your time to share some knowledge with me. Cheers