I'm looking at setting up my first server Dell Poweredge 520

[GrahamBB]

Has anyone any experience of this system? Is it good, bad?

And I see that it has a RAID card already, any advice on using that or not?

Cheers

 

[Darren Myers]

Please dont use a raid card , get a M1015, or simply read through some of the other posts involving raid cards and how theyre a terrible idea, like running FreeNAS on less then 8Gb of RAM.

 

[HoneyBadger]

What generation is the R520?

Seconding Darren on "don't use a RAID card, ever" - if you have the option to equip this with the H200 or H310 then they can be flashed to their respective LSI cousins in IT mode to be ZFS-friendly.

 

[marbus90]

I believe the R520 is only available with Xeon E5-2400 v2 series CPUs. It's an acceptable box, as long as you replace the RAID card with an LSI 9211-8i HBA. Maybe you can use only the S110, which is the Intel SATA controller. It may not provide enough ports tho.

 

[GrahamBB]

Thanks all!

 

[GrahamBB]

Well, turns out that I quoted the wrong model number. It's actually a PowerEdge 710 - it seems a much more powerful system.

So my question is: is the RAID card in there reflashable? The parts list cites TWO parts that I can't seem to track anywhere:

ASSEMBLY, CABLE, POWEREDGE EXPANDABLE RAID CONTROLLER NUMBER, SAS-0, 3.5, R710
M020F

and

ASSEMBLY, CABLE, POWEREDGE EXPANDABLE RAID CONTROLLER NUMBER, SAS-1, 3.5, R710
23501.

We are planning on installing 8 x Seagate Archive HDD 8TB SATA III Hard Drive MFR # ST8000AS0002.

Any comments / advice?

Cheers

 

[Darren Myers]

Check out the forums for info about the 8Tb archive drives, and the 710 is a great server, but i dont know if the card in it is flash able.... i wanna say no, but someone else might have better info

 

[marbus90]

that thing is a SMR drive without limited error recovery, so expect 30-60MB/s troughput per disk. Not the fastest drive under the sun, but $/TB are exceptional and very good for a d2d2t backup solution.

I'll still get a proper LSI 9211-8i HBA instead of crossflashing on production systems.

 

[GrahamBB]

Thanks folks! My confusion is now in the 'critical' category!

 

[Darren Myers]

So FreeNAS relies on hard drives that are in JBOD, the M1015 when cross flashed to P16 IT firmware allows the hard drives to be seen by FreeNAS. The use of a hardware raid controller is playing Russian roulette with your data as FreeNAS works best when it has access to the hard drives directly and has access to SMART data. The LSI 9211-8i is a similar model to the M1015, or the M1015 is based off it, another member can correct me on that lol. The fact of the matter is; don't use a hardware raid controller or a control that can not do JBOD, and no making a bunch of raid 0 drives on a hardware raid card won't do either

 

[marbus90]

Do not try crossflashing M1015 or the existing RAID controller.

Do buy LSI 9211-8i HBA and use it instead of the existing RAID controller.

If you still don't understand it: call ixsystems and let them build a server to your needs.

 

[Ericloewe]

There's nothing inherently wrong with crossflashing (not that it seems to be possible in this case), since the process either works well or fails very obviously. It might make more sense to get a card that doesn't require the crossflash, depending on the price and setting, though.

 

[marbus90]

It's a server with an existing controller. Most controllers have the SFF-8087 connectors on the rear end of the card. An M1015 would require new, longer cables. Also M1015 and 9211-8i are closer in price now since the M1015 is named everywhere. typcial overdemand situation.

Plus it's a production server, so I wouldn't try shaving off the last penny but go for reliable, new hardware with warranty and manufacturer support.