IBM M1015 - Desktop hardware

[WallaceTech]

Hi Guys.

I have decided to give FreeNas another blast and i want to get setup with a storage card. From what i can see peeps are saying that the IBM M1015 reflashed with IT firmware is the way to go.

My question is will this card work with standard desktop hardware or will it only work in a server. The reason i ask is that i purchased a HP P400 raid card for something else and it would not work. It seems these cards will only work in server class hardware.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jgreco]

It could work. It depends. FWIW stuff doesn't play nice with each other. The desktop manufacturers typically stick video cards in there.

 

[Ericloewe]

Vendor-branded stuff sometimes is designed not to work elsewhere... But even stuff that is theoretically designed to work everywhere can be problematic. As Jgreco said, it's uncertain.

If you want to spend money because you want something reliable, I recommend you go for the whole deal - server motherboard and ECC (and new CPU if needed).

 

[Z300M]

It could work. It depends. FWIW stuff doesn't play nice with each other. The desktop manufacturers typically stick video cards in there.

To put it another way: I have read that on some desktop motherboards the x16 slot -- intended for a video card -- will work only with a video card.

 

[WallaceTech]

Thanks for all the replies. I am not looking to spend mega money as this is only for a home NAS to run some VM's and music , files etc. What would be a good 'generic' card that i could look at for a desktop PC?

Thanks in advance

 

[cyberjock]

Sigh... someone isn't getting it. :(

 

[WallaceTech]

I do get it! Your saying in order for me to use freenas I need to go out and purchase server class hardware for a home setup. Is it not the point that freenas can be used on old hardware? Was that not what I was reading on the main page and in documentation?

I can confirm that the pcie slots in my desktop run more than just a video card. The machine will run the super micro aoc-saslp-mv8 card successfully with the right OS but freenas does not support this card.

So there must be a card that will function with it not being a high end server. My desktop is a hp elite desk 800 g1 which is quite new.

 

[Ericloewe]

I do get it! Your saying in order for me to use freenas I need to go out and purchase server class hardware for a home setup. Is it not the point that freenas can be used on old hardware? Was that not what I was reading on the main page and in documentation?

Not in the slightest. Nothing about FreeNAS is designed with repurposing old hardware in mind.

 

[WallaceTech]

From the FAQ

To use FreeNAS, you'll need standard PC hardware with a 64-bit processor and at least 8GB of RAM, a 4GB USB Flash drive, and a FreeNAS installation file. Either write FreeNAS directly to the flash drive or boot the CD installer to have it done for you. Point your web browser at the IP address of the FreeNAS system and you're good to go! Read the FreeNAS Documentation for more information.

This does not say Server class hardware and that to use freenas I need to go out buying it.

Look I don't want to get in to an argument over it. I am just looking for some assistance on getting 8 x SATA 3 drives working in a HP desktop. I have 2 x 4 bay drive caddy that I am looking to use.

Thanks in adavance

 

[Zedicus]

for some reason some of the forum members seem to enjoy hazing newcomers.
i will say i am using a HP P410 on a crappy asrock desktop board that only has 1 pcie slot and it says *only supports most graphics cards* in the chinglish manual. but ZFS is best served with ECC ram and if you need to buy a card for use on crappy old hardware i would get a adaptec 5405(4 drives) or 5805(8 drives) and skip ZFS.
going 'low cost' can be done for ZFS but 'going cheap' can not.

 

[esamett]

My consumer grade setup works great. See my info to left.

 

[Zedicus]

My consumer grade setup works great. See my info to left.

that is a great low cost system but it reuses none of the OP original hardware. i think the point is that his current hardware is not really ZFS ready but with a older low cost hardware RAID controller he could get some NAS capabilities out of it. otherwise yes a build like yours would be a great "low cost" ZFS build.

 

[cyberjock]

for some reason some of the forum members seem to enjoy hazing newcomers.

And some forum members seem to enjoy talking about what they did and not what is smart...

 

[DannyKlenz]

Different strokes for different folks.

 

[esamett]

My comment was intended to give an example of a success consumer build.

 

[cyberjock]

My comment was intended to give an example of a success consumer build.

Just helped someone with a "consumer" build of FreeNAS today. They lost 35TB of data that wasn't backed up. WHOOPS!

 

[9C1 Newbee]

Dats alotta data! How many disks were used? How were they configured?

 

[cyberjock]

Desktop board, non-ECC RAM, etc.

They had bad RAM and in conjunction they had done multiple disk replacements without following the manual. They had "just" 50 million errors by scrub. They wanted to argue that ZFS has redundancy so RAM isn't the problem and I pointed them to my thread on ECC and they were like "but it worked fine for more than 18 months".

Sorry, but "working" and "trustworthy" aren't the same thing.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

Sounds like it didn't really work out for them. Horse, water, yadda yadda.

 

[esamett]

I'm glad I upgraded to ECC. Could you point me in direction of information AMD consumer ECC implementation not being robust? I think that you implied that in a prior post. Thank for the expertise.