Anyone using FreeNAS with Dell Compellent hardware?

[Tom Lee]

I was given a 103 TB Dell compellent, 2 SC8000 controllers 5 shelves, one with 12 200GB SAS SSDs, 2 with 24 x 900 GB SAS 10k drives each, 2 with 24 x 10k 1.2TB drives each. I was wondering if this is a candidate for a FreeNAS setup?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Only if all the buit-in RAID functionality can be eliminated, to give ZFS full, direct control of the physical disks.

 

[Borja Marcos]

The SC8000 "controller" is actually a server as far as I know. I would try booting it with a memory stick.

If it can boot, you can see the hardware inventory. I guess it won't be based on a "smart" RAID card, because the "intelligent" component is the server itself running Compellent software. I guess you will find a bunch of
SAS HBAs, and hopefully they will be usable with FreeNAS.

A system Dell showed us some time ago actually ran NetBSD. Maybe it was a Compellent?

 

[Tom Lee]

Guess I will have to test it. I understand that the compellent hardware has special firmware on the drives and controllers that wont allow it to use normal drives so was wondering if anyone knew whether freenas would be able to use them or not.

 

[Borja Marcos]

Guess I will have to test it. I understand that the compellent hardware has special firmware on the drives and controllers that wont allow it to use normal drives so was wondering if anyone knew whether freenas would be able to use them or not.

The devil is in the details. My educated guess is that what you call the "controller" is actually a server. Probably they use more or less off-she-shelf HBAs and, of course, their "dedicated firmware" -- which is a more or less full fledged OS, will insist on using only approved components together with their tested firmware versions.

So, just try :) Hopefully you will be able to boot a "controller" off a FreeNAS or FreeBSD memory stick and check what you find.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

special firmware on the drives

Sounds like a bad plan, assuming that you'll have to replace a failed drive with another 'special' drive. One reason for using ZFS is that is works with just about any drive, even drives with mismatched specs, as long as you give it full control.

 

[gpsguy]

If this is for a work environment, my recommendation would be to pony up the maintenance cost and keep the Compellent OS.

I managed a 2 x controller + 1 shelf Compellent SAN for ~5 years. Their software, combined with "copilot support" was excellent. While I don't have experience with TrueNAS, my *guess*, based on FreeNAS, is that Compellent is rock solid compared with iXsystems software offerings.

I'd still be running it today, but given the alignment of the stars last year, I was forced into another solution.