So, then, my LSI 9240-8i with the expander should be fine? 64 drives supported as JBOD.


> On Apr 10, 2015, at 12:05 PM, Munir Nassar <nassarmu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If you are going the FreeNAS route you should not be getting a RAID
> controller. a SAS controller maybe(HBA) if you are going with an
> external disk array, but not a RAID controller.
> 
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Ryan Coleman <ryan.coleman at cwis.biz> wrote:
>> I looked at RAID 6 (but for ESXi) and with that I had an additional $1200 cost.
>> 
>> I just purchased the SAS expander for my card and I’d rather not eat that (although $200 was far less than MSRP).
>> 
>> So if I go FreeNAS I should only be limited to the RAID controllers that have FreeBSD support, right?
>> 
>> The plan is to finish our off-site storage system, yes. The entire migration operation I’m working on will take months to complete so I have a little bit of time (and I have three RR2320s lying around) but I need to spend as little as possible at this point after dropping $2000 in drives last week.
>> 
>>> On Apr 10, 2015, at 10:40 AM, Munir Nassar <nassarmu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I would (and have gone) the FreeNAS/zfs route.You do not want a RAID5
>>> (or its ZFS equivalent RAID-Z) with drives of that size, RAID6/Z2 is
>>> better. If you can spare the cost, go RAID-X3. If possible i would get
>>> two servers so that you can have an offsite replica of the data,
>>> something easily done with FreeNAS.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 11:59 PM, Ryan Coleman <ryan.coleman at cwis.biz> wrote:
>>>> 90 days and $17,000 later I have my 13TB array recovered.
>>>> 
>>>> Thank goodness for business insurance!
>>>> 
>>>> So I have the need to build a bigger, better, smarter storage system. Presently I’m looking at 16x3TB drives and a RAID 5 running in ESXi… But it’s time to consider alternatives… NAS, SAN, something.
>>>> 
>>>> I’ve avoided ZFS talk for years because it never applied, and FreeNAS is definitely up my alley with 14 years FreeBSD experience - but what would you do? Primary function is long-term data storage but also serving up many network services as well as development projects.
>>>> 
>>>> I have an LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i with a SAS expander and would be maxing out the 16 RAID drives for that if I go with a RAID but I really want knowledge on personal experiences with various NAS options.
>>>> 
>>>> One requirement: Must be iSCSI capable with ESXi 5.5 (free license). ESXi machine is super-loaded (6 core Sandy bridge Xeon and 32GB) but was design for the future growth.
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>> 
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