Use a Hardware Virtual Disk or ZFS with Dell R510

MelThorpe

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Jan 6, 2019
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I picked up a Dell R510 and it has the H700 which cant be flashed, so I picked up a pre-flashed H200 so I can potentially use pass-through to the disks.

My current FreeNAS server has (6) 2TB drives setup up in RAIDZ2 and I am working the plan on how I want to setup the new FreeNAS box. I will be starting out with (6) 2TB drives to get the new FreeNAS server up and running, copy over the data from the current FreeNAS server and then I want to move the (6) 2TB disks from the current server to the new one and add those drives to the existing pool, if thats possible. I know I can expand a virtual disk in the Dell using OpenManage, but its a bit of a pain on this gen of Dell with no Windows OS on the box.

1) Use the H700 hardware RAID in the Dell to create a large virtual disk using RAID10, but its not clear if FreeNAS supports the H700 in this config
2) Use the flashed H200 so FreeNAS can see the disks and use RAIDZ2
3) Use the flashed H200 hardware RAID to create a large virtual disk using RAID10 similar to #1

I'm sort of leaning towards option #2, but I thought I would throw it out there to see what people have for suggestions and if there are any limitations with the hardware as to what I can do on this box.
 

Linkman

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Feb 19, 2015
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Use option 2, and add the second set of six discs as a second RAIDZ2 vdev to the original volume. You'll end up with two six-disc RAIDZ2 vdevs in one volume (or pool).
 

sretalla

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Options 1 and 3 will technically work, or at least give you the impression it is working, but will be a fast road to data destruction running like that.

Option 2 is the only one you will get any help from this forum to run and operate and is clearly how FreeNAS/ZFS is designed to operate. If you take options 1 or 3, you're on your own.
 

jgreco

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May 29, 2011
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The H700 can absolutely be flashed - we do it all the time - it's just not CROSS-flashable to a useful firmware. You need the IT firmware which will only work on the H200.

The H200 is a trivial drop-in to replace the H700. The only problem with the R510's is that there aren't good options for boot device if you have the 12-bay+2-internal variant. I don't consider external USB a good option, and the internal USB is a trainwreck, and I prefer to reserve the two internal 2.5 bays for more meaningful stuff.

I've been dropping an additional H310 crossflashed to IR mode into R510's, and then using an Addonics card to power two M.2 SATA SSD's, and using that as boot. Kinda stupidly expensive.
 

MelThorpe

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Jan 6, 2019
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I was planning on using the (2) 2.5" internal slots to install FreeNAS. I have had way too many USB drives fail and trying to get to them in the R510 is a PITA. Is there a specific reason you don't use the internal slots for boot?
 

jgreco

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I was planning on using the (2) 2.5" internal slots to install FreeNAS. I have had way too many USB drives fail and trying to get to them in the R510 is a PITA. Is there a specific reason you don't use the internal slots for boot?

They'll work fine for the job, but typically I would want to reserve those for L2ARC and/or SLOG devices. Because the R510 has significant memory expansion capacity, that's something I would definitely consider, but if it isn't an issue for you, of course it'd be a good choice for boot device(s).
 

MelThorpe

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Jan 6, 2019
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My FreeNAS box is mostly for Plex and standard file storage. Personal documents, photos, storing stems for music I am working on, my iTunes collections, etc. No NFS here. And I'm not planning on maxing the memory anytime soon considering its not a box that gets heavily used most of the time. Its got 24GB of RAM now. I may get it up to 32 or 64GB at some point, but that would probably be it. Unless I decide to move my VMs from my ESXi machine to VMs in FreeNAS, then I would definitely want to beef up the FreeNAS box. But thats not something I am planning anytime soon.
 
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