BUILD What's good HBA for DELL PowerEdge T130

[Slavik]

Getting myself DELL PowerEdge T130:
- Xeon E3-1225 v5 3.3GHz
- 32GB UDIMM,2133MT/s,ECC
- LOM Broadcom BCM5720 1Gbps

It's going to be ESXI 6.0 system, and I want to have FreeNAS 10, as VM on it with 16GB reserved for FreeNAS VM.
So, I read guides, and understand I need to pass-through SATA controller.
Please help me identify controller to buy for that purpose.

Dell sais following controllers are compatible with T130:
- PERC S130
- PERC H330
- PERC H730
- PERC H830
I searched this forum and seems like PERC H-series can be cross flashed, but the process is rather complicated.

I read hardware guide and it names few good HBAs. Does anyone here experience using them with DELL? Any compatibility issue? Would you recommend certain HBA controller, which would work out-of-the box with T130?

 

[9C1 Newbee]

And this is exactly the reason I ended up ditching my Dell. But mine was way older and not as cool. Might be worth rolling the dice on on a controller for it, depending what you are doing with it.

 

[Slavik]

My progress so far:
I bought LSI SAS9207-8I.
Attached one WD 8TB hard drive to it.
And tried FreeNAS 10 Nightly.

And got intermittent `Unrecoverable Host Bus Adapter Error`. See here for details:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/unrecoverable-host-bus-adapter-error.47740/

Basically, LSI card seems to be working fine in bottom PCI slot (bottom) and dies in top (next to CPU).

Later this week I'll receive another two of 8TB WD drives and will build RaidZ-1 and do more testing.

If all works out, I'm planning to put it into home-production (NAS) use by the time FreeNAS 10 is released.

 

[Chirag K]

My progress so far:
I bought LSI SAS9207-8I.
Attached one WD 8TB hard drive to it.
And tried FreeNAS 10 Nightly.

And got intermittent `Unrecoverable Host Bus Adapter Error`. See here for details:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/unrecoverable-host-bus-adapter-error.47740/

Basically, LSI card seems to be working in bottom PCI slot (bottom) and dies in top (next to CPU).

Later this week I'll receive another two of 8TB WD drives and will build RaidZ-1 and do more testing.

If all works out, I'm planning to put it into home-production (NAS) use by the time FreeNAS 10 is released.

Hi

I am planning a similar build - will put the LSI Card + Intel SAS Expander to add more drives (in an external enclosure).

Was your Dell T130 stable ? Did you put it in Production?

I assume you did not use any RAID fro T130 side due to ZFS

 

[Slavik]

Running it for about 2 months now with FreeNAS10 nightly.
Configured it as RaidZ1: 3 WD HDDs x 8TB
Just in case, I increased fan speed for better airflow via IDRAC settings.
The FreeNAS is stable, no issues so far.

I have minor issue with the T130:
As I mentioned above - I'm running FreeNAS as VM in ESXI 6.0U2.
ESXI and few VMs (including FreeNAS VM) are stored on 1TB HDD, attached to motherboard SATA controller. And I regularly see some SCSI errors in ESXI log for that disk. I called DELL support and they said, that is because ESXI is not supported with onboard controller - ESXI supported only with hardware RAID.
But so far, it gives me no problem.

I figured, that even if I lose ESXI disk, I can rebuild ESXI + FreeNAS VM from scratch and import volume. I'm planning to test that scenario eventually, before committing to using that system as my main NAS.

For "production", I'm still waiting for the FreeNAS 10 release. Until that time - I'm still sitting on my Synology, with FreeNAS as backup.

 

[Chirag K]

Running it for about 2 months now with FreeNAS10 nightly.
Configured it as RaidZ1: 3 WD HDDs x 8TB
Just in case, I increased fan speed for better airflow via IDRAC settings.
The FreeNAS is stable, no issues so far.

I have minor issue with the T130:
As I mentioned above - I'm running FreeNAS as VM in ESXI 6.0U2.
ESXI and few VMs (including FreeNAS VM) are stored on 1TB HDD, attached to motherboard SATA controller. And I regularly see some SCSI errors in ESXI log for that disk. I called DELL support and they said, that is because ESXI is not supported with onboard controller - ESXI supported only with hardware RAID.
But so far, it gives me no problem.

I figured, that even if I lose ESXI disk, I can rebuild ESXI + FreeNAS VM from scratch and import volume. I'm planning to test that scenario eventually, before committing to using that system as my main NAS.

Thanks for the quick reply. This is encouraging!
I am still figuring out whether to build or buy my system since there are so many hardware variables and preferences that FreeNAS has...

Mine is going to be a dedicated FreeNAS server and will be the main file and VM server. VM will run on XenServer (you should check it out, just like ESXi, but free including vMotion, backup etc - I came from ESXi to XenServer)

 

[Slavik]

Mine is going to be a dedicated FreeNAS server and will be the main file and VM server. VM will run on XenServer (you should check it out, just like ESXi, but free including vMotion, backup etc - I came from ESXi to XenServer)

I'm not sure what you mean - I would think it can be one or another: :)
- Either it can be dedicated FreeNAS server or Hypervisor with FreeNAS VM in it.

As of XenServer - I read somewhere on this forum, that the only "supported" hypervisor is ESXI.
I think it has something to do with vmware tools, which FreeNAS has only for ESXI.

 

[Chirag K]

I'm not sure what you mean - I would think it can be one or another: :)
- Either it can be dedicated FreeNAS server or Hypervisor with FreeNAS VM in it.

As of XenServer - I read somewhere on this forum, that the only "supported" hypervisor is ESXI.
I think it has something to do with vmware tools, which FreeNAS has only for ESXI.

Sorry for confusion.. I meant the build I am doing will be dedicated FreeNAS server with 24 drives in its pool.
The XenServer pool runs on other physical servers.

XenServer's storage will be configured to read/write from the FreeNAS's NFS share - all connected by 10 Gb network/fabric.

Its possible that FreeNAS as a guest VM may not be supported on XenServer - but I have not researched that so not sure.