SmartOS experimentation, hardware and general ideas

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youtopia

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Jun 13, 2013
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Hey people,

I've been lurking around in these forums for a long time but now i want to post and ask.

We are currently replacing our server hardware and the old server hardware are given to me and i can use them for what i want. I have two 3-year old HP
DL380 G6 servers. One was used as ESXi host:

HP DL380G6 E5520 QC 1P 8MB/6GB P410 (TV)
HP SMART ARRAY 512MB BBWC KIT FOR P410
12 X HP 2GB 2RANK RDIMM X8 1333MHZ (24GB RAM)
2 x HP 146GB 10K 2.5" SFF SAS 3G DP ENT HDD
4 x HP 300GB 10K 2.5" SFF SAS 3G DP ENT HDD
1 x HP DL380 G6 E5520 CPU KIT (2nd CPU)
1 x HP 750W REDUNDANT POWER SUPPLY KIT

And the other one as standalone WS2008R2:

HP DL380G6 E5520 QC 1P 8MB/6GB P410 (TV)
HP SMART ARRAY 512MB BBWC KIT FOR P410
6 x HP 2GB RAM (12GB)
2 x HP 146GB 10K 2.5" SFF SAS 3G DP ENT HDD
6 x HP 300GB 10K 2.5" SFF SAS 3G DP ENT HDD
1 x HP DL380 G6 E5520 CPU KIT (2nd CPU)
1 x HP 750W REDUNDANT POWER SUPPLY KIT

Now, i was thinking about trying SmartOS (+ project FiFo http://project-fifo.net/display/PF/Project+FiFo+Home) with the servers. I have moderate experience with ZFS, but so far i've only used these storage operating
systems like Freenas,Nas4free etc. I've been reading alot of SmartOS documentation and nothing seems to hard. I want to create VM's for testing purposes (storage+application servers), nothing for straight production use.

My question is that what's the deal with ZFS and hardware RAID controllers? What should i do, use and/or possibly not use as currently there's the Smart Array P410 controller? Any other comments or ideas regarding the hardware, disk setup and setting up SmartOS? Just post your thoughts if you have any.

Cheers
 
ZFS does not like hardware raid cards, because hw-raid interferes with ZFS when accessing disks. ZFS wants exclusive acess to the disks. The reason is that ZFS needs exclusive access to the disks in order to give data integrity and other stuff. If you use hw-raid card, ZFS will detect data corruption, but can not always repair it. You get an unsafe solution with hw-raid cards. Best is to flash the hw-raid card as JBOD mode, or IT-mode. Get rid of all hw-raid functionality, and turn the card into a dumb HBA just for connecting disks. Read the wikipedia link on ZFS.
 
I'm using smartOS myself and I have to say I REALLY like it. Unfortunately I found Fifo had some problems for me. It wasn't working flawlessly when i tested it, but it didn't interfere either and since I only asigned it 256 mb of ram i would still recommending giving it a try, it hardly has much overhead. Just make sure you know how to manage the VM's manually as well.

Yeah, no hardware raid.
 
I'm also running SmartOS at home. The Dell P200 or P310, or IBM M1015 controllers are cheap and readily available. A hundred dollars or so gets you a known-working HBA. The P410 might Just Work, give it a try, but if you get stuck eBay has some good options. If you want to run some more VMs at once, more RAM won't hurt anything, and it's cheap these days, less than $10/GB.

As an aside, would you be willing to lend me one of those P410s for a while so I can upgrade my SAS expander? I'm trying to move away from it (to independent HBAs) but I might be able to get a better price for it if it had later firmware on it, and I generally can't resist upgrading firmware any time it's available. PM me if you might be willing to help me out.
 
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