[PVE-User] get the most of storage for a very old dell pe 2950.

[Dimitri Alexandris]

I have an old Dell 1950 with one cpu (2 disks).  Was 1+1G ram, added 16+16
and now have 34G.  Two power supplies.

1-  Never bothered to change SAS controller mode.
2-  SATA disks (up to 2T of course) work perfectly, never used transposers.
3-  First worked with an internal SSD (at internal SATA port, plus an addon
power cable) for OS (always ZFS) + 2 SATA disks (ZFS raid) for data.  3
years, no problems.
4-  Now i bought 2 SAS 1T, with OS on them, and also works fine.
5-  Hot plugging disks is working fine.  I actually increased capacity with
bigger disks without stopping anything this way.  Had 500G SATA before 1T
SAS diks.

I configure the 2 eths in OVS (openvswitch) bond mode, with several VLANS
and internal networks (OVS IntPorts).

In your case, with many SAS disks you will be fine with any configuration,
e.g.:

3+3 x 2T = 6T ZFS raid, OS + data, the fastest combination, or
5+1 ZFS raidz, 10T space, with best capacity, or
4+2 ZFS raidz2, 8T space, also big, and safer.

Do yourself a favour, and buy some decent SAS disks, at 7200rpm are very
cheap.


On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 6:08 PM Kyle Schmitt <kyleaschmitt at gmail.com> wrote:

> I run on R610s, so about the same generation I think.  I use the
> hardware raid for mirrored boot drive only, and NFS over 10G for VM
> storage, which is on a seperate system running FreeBSD + ZFS.
>
> But for your case: the general rule for any storage system is don't
> mix.  You pick one and only one: hardware raid, software raid, zfs,
> ceph, etc.  The exceptions are for systems you almost definitely won't
> be using like luster and gluster.
>
> You can still do hotplug with JBOD mode, at least on the dell hardware
> I've used.  I have no idea if it's officially supported or not.  I do
> know that I sometimes have to use the raid tools to bring in a new
> drive when it's NOT in JBOD mode.
>
> In the 6ish years I've run ZFS I've only had one drive fail (pure
> luck, not skill), and it was trivial to swap out and replace.
>
> --Kyle
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 7:59 AM Leandro Roggerone
> <leandro at tecnetmza.com.ar> wrote:
> >
> > Hi guys , I received a very old del pe 2950 box.
> > Fortunately it has 64 GB and a double power supply, so i'm thinking about
> > using it with pve.
> > After confirm with dell support about storage capacity:
> > Max physical storage support is 2TB.
> > Max virtual storage support is also 2TB.
> > ##
> > I was reading on previous emails at this mail list , about storage:
> >  "putting the controller in JBOD mode
> > and install directly with ZFS software RAID."
> >
> > I always thought that raid hardware controller was the best option but ,
> > perhaps I can give it a try to ZFS software RAID with this old server
> ....
> > what do you think ?
> > I have a bunch of 3.5" with odd capacities  unused drives.
> > I readed that zfs can merge them to get a more efficient use.
> > What about hot replace / remove or insert a new drive ?
> > Will it work without service disruption in production environments ?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Leandro.
> >
> > <
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