Off-the-shelf hardware ("COTS") - which enclosure?

[rainer_d]

Hi,

a couple of years ago we built our own filers (some with Solaris, some with OpenSolaris and I think we have one with SmartOS now, too...)
This used hardware that turned out to be non-suitable for the task, mostly.
As an example, we have a huge problem of Solaris not disconnecting a drive that it can't read from or write to. The whole pool hangs, basically, until you reboot and whatever is responsible finally gives up and the drive is faulted...

I'd like to rebuild these years-old systems completely, using the best hardware available for the task.

However, building it from scratch is out of the question for us. We're primarily a HP-shop, but HP hardware is obviously useless for the task.

I looked around: the only thing that I could maybe persuade the people in charge of writing the cheques into buying are those "certified for nexenta" systems.

I'm thinking of either the offerings here:
http://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/products/storage-systems/nexenta-storage.html
or here:
http://www.transtec.ch/en/products/storage/provigo-nexentastor-nas/

I'm really looking at the external enclosures rather than the servers themselves as I can fit an LSI-card into one of our HP-servers and be good with it...

What would be most important to us (and it does not work with the current controller/firmware/OS/enclosure combination) is that drive LEDs "work" in the sense that when a drive is faulty some sort of optical feedback (a red or yellow LED comes to mind) lights up.

I read in the feature-comparison chart that FreeNAS, as opposed to TrueNAS, does not support "enclosure management" - is that what I want?

Also, is anyone using a LSI-9207 controller in production (IT firmware), with some sort of external enclosure?

As far as I have understood, the firmware-levels of FreeNAS and the controller have to match.
Can a current-generation 9207 be back-flashed to an earlier version (which version would that be for FreeNAS 9.2, anyway?)? What issues can arise?

Sorry for the long posting...

Thanks in advance

 

[cyberjock]

I know of no hardware that uses ZFS and has drive LEDs that work for failed disks, aside from expensive servers($10k+ for absurdly small amounts of storage space). LEDs are so quaint in this day and age. Real administrators go by disk serial numbers and other definitive tools.

 

[rainer_d]

I know of no hardware that uses ZFS and has drive LEDs that work for failed disks, aside from expensive servers($10k+ for absurdly small amounts of storage space). LEDs are so quaint in this day and age. Real administrators go by disk serial numbers and other definitive tools.

Well, I could wire down the IDs.

But it would be so much better to be able to pin-point a dead drive.
That said, I read the mfiutil(8) has a way of lighting up the drive-LEDs on a controller - it would just remain to be seen how well that works.
Unfortunately, a fully populated 60 disk jbod is around 30k+ (depending in which options you go for) in our local currency - so trial and error isn't really an option here...

 

[jgreco]

Timing out is what TLER is all about. Failing to pick drives capable of TLER is all sorts of fun...