Migrate Pool to new HBA controller

[crisman]

Hi,

I've Freenas 9.1.1 x64 installed on a Asus E45M1-M PRO board with 5 sata drives supporting a Raid-Z pool, I would like to install this pool to a new HBA controller (Dell PERC H200 or Serveraid M1015 Flashed IT) and would like to know if is possible to migrate this drives/pools to the new controller without loosing the pool?

Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

Assuming the controller just disk standard disk passthrough like a dumb SATA controller should, you can plug the hard drives in anywhere and as long as the controller is a passthrough controller and is supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS when you poweron the box the pool will mount as if you hadn't changed a thing.

I know you can mix and match with the M1015, but I have no experience with the PERC. Most PERCs people mention here are not HBAs and don't really work properly in HBA mode, so I'd be inclined to say "buy the M1015 that everyone else buys".

 

[crisman]

Assuming the controller just disk standard disk passthrough like a dumb SATA controller should, you can plug the hard drives in anywhere and as long as the controller is a passthrough controller and is supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS when you poweron the box the pool will mount as if you hadn't changed a thing.

I know you can mix and match with the M1015, but I have no experience with the PERC. Most PERCs people mention here are not HBAs and don't really work properly in HBA mode, so I'd be inclined to say "buy the M1015 that everyone else buys".

Hi Cyberjock,

Thanks for your reply,

according to this 2 threads:

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/dell-md1200-sas-h200-perc.12934/

This one was initiated by me:

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...-8-port-sas-sata-raid-card.20407/#post-116598

It seems the Dell don't need to be flashed because it supports the full passthrough, I really would like to test with the Dell H200 because I've some systems running with the M1015 but sometimes "people" have some headaches flashing this card and if I could get a really full passthrough card that it works well on freenas and won't need to be flashed I think its preferably to use it, and the prices are the same. :)

Supposing that installing this card I won't have problems getting the pool back online, the only thing I've to be carefully is the hard disk order, won't you agree?

Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

Honestly, aside from the flashing(which really is easy.. i got it right the first time....) I'd argye that if you want a card "that works well on Freenas" you're wanting an M1015. Stuff like Dell, HP, etc often forces you to flash an update to work with a driver and stuff anyway. Since that knowledge doesn't have a support path because we don't recommend them, you may have problems later that you never expected and aren't even documented. We've seen plenty of controllers that just stop working on a FreeNAS update because the driver was abandoned by the company and there was no update that was made compatible with the latest version of FreeBSD. There's alot of people still on 8.x and 9.1.1 because of those problems.

But you can bet your butt the M1015 will work. Since the M1015 is hands-down the most used card you can expect a riot if it suddenly stopped working. In fact, when 9.x was still in beta there were a few testers that fixed a few critical problems that you and I never saw because we stayed on the RELEASE path. If your controller has a problem you almost certainly won't find that kind of support with too many other controllers. So the M1015 is less risky than virtually everything else out there when it comes to FreeNAS.

 

[crisman]

To be honest I agree with you about the support for the Dell cards in future, we will never know if the drivers will support them. Regarding the problems flashing the M1015, I've flashed 3 until now without problem, but read that other's had, probably the firmware version, I'm using the P16 firmware version (followed this thread http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...-smartctl-issues-ibm-m1015.19074/#post-106291), and they have been working fine, and SMART is also supported, the only thing it seems strange to me is that when I use the "mfiutil show adapter" tools it reports nothing found, the controller is there and drives are recognized and working, probably the driver on the release of freenas is different than "mfi".

 

[cyberjock]

In IT mode it doesn't use the mfi driver and it's not an mfi device.. it uses the mps driver and is an mps device. That's one of the changes you get when you flash it to IT mode.

That's why it doesn't work. ;)

 

[crisman]

Cool, I'm glad to hear that!!
I thought it was some kind of problem on flashing the controllers.
BTW what version of firmware you use when you flash yours?

 

[cyberjock]

I match the firmware version to the driver version. Since I'm on 9.2.0 still I think I'm on v13 or v14. 9.2.1+ uses v16.