Introduction
Hello all, first time poster. I'll do my best to explain myself and ask the right questions, but I apologize in advance if I end up all over the place!
History
For probably 5 years I've just had a 4u rack-mount server running some older hardware with 4x 3tb drives shared on my network. Other than occasionally a counter-strike source gameserver...its been nothing but a file server. This is now filled up, and I'm trying to do something new/different/better. I have lots of IT hardware experience, but very little when it comes to Raid controllers or raid in general. I'm hoping to get proxmox running with truenas and maybe some other VM's? Wireguard? ect..
Hardware
I have a few servers but this one has the best CPU/power ratio. It's a intel server board S1200V3RPS with 16gb ddr3l 1600mhz ECC UDIMM and two 2tb HDDS in the front little hot swap thing there that's built into it. It seems to have a PCI raid controller card that controls these two HDDS. After researching and going through many threads on here I purchased two other raid controllers ( LSI 9211-4i) and (LSI 9285CV-8E) because these seem to be compatible with the HDD racks shown in the photos. The 9211-4i came flashed (it mode?) and works great except for the LED lights on the caddies.
The enclosures are EMC KIN-STL3 with the correct interposers to be able to run either (hopefully simultaneously) both regular SATA drives as well as SAS. I have just BOXES of old 3.5 regular hdds, ranging from 160gb to 4tb. Probably around 35 of them.
Price
Hopefully as little as possible. The server was free, the three hdd racks were $10 a piece at goodwill electronics. The raid controller I'm using was $30 on ebay. I also had to buy 3 SFF-8080 cables at $10 a piece as well as a pci internal/exteneral adapter for the LSI card that worked since these wouldn't be in the case.
So far I've spent roughly $120 on this setup.
Attempts
When I first got the card, I was able to throw it in my windows PC, and find drives! From my college days I had a legitimate copy of VMWare workstation 8? that they then upgraded to 12. After trying to do a trueenas setup on this, I was unsuccessful (later found out whatever version i have does not support pass-through). After getting this server running, and installing the card. I've been able to install proxmox but here is where my questions arrive, and where I'm venturing into uncharted territory.
Questions
Other than the existential "what the hell am i doing", my biggest question is how can I install (or reinstall) proxmox on this server with what I assume is a hardware raid on two drives...and then after get promox to do passthrough on ONLY ONE of the two installed raid controllers? Does IOMMU have options that I can change when I get to that?
When I installed proxmox I basically just loosely followed youtubes and did the next...next...next. It used ext4 and as far as i can tell it just installed to one drive? Is pulling either drive separately and booting the only way to check this? There were options to use like Raid1.
Closing
If you've read this far, sincerely, thank you. I appreciate your time, and any advice you could give me.
Hello all, first time poster. I'll do my best to explain myself and ask the right questions, but I apologize in advance if I end up all over the place!
History
For probably 5 years I've just had a 4u rack-mount server running some older hardware with 4x 3tb drives shared on my network. Other than occasionally a counter-strike source gameserver...its been nothing but a file server. This is now filled up, and I'm trying to do something new/different/better. I have lots of IT hardware experience, but very little when it comes to Raid controllers or raid in general. I'm hoping to get proxmox running with truenas and maybe some other VM's? Wireguard? ect..
Hardware
I have a few servers but this one has the best CPU/power ratio. It's a intel server board S1200V3RPS with 16gb ddr3l 1600mhz ECC UDIMM and two 2tb HDDS in the front little hot swap thing there that's built into it. It seems to have a PCI raid controller card that controls these two HDDS. After researching and going through many threads on here I purchased two other raid controllers ( LSI 9211-4i) and (LSI 9285CV-8E) because these seem to be compatible with the HDD racks shown in the photos. The 9211-4i came flashed (it mode?) and works great except for the LED lights on the caddies.
The enclosures are EMC KIN-STL3 with the correct interposers to be able to run either (hopefully simultaneously) both regular SATA drives as well as SAS. I have just BOXES of old 3.5 regular hdds, ranging from 160gb to 4tb. Probably around 35 of them.
Price
Hopefully as little as possible. The server was free, the three hdd racks were $10 a piece at goodwill electronics. The raid controller I'm using was $30 on ebay. I also had to buy 3 SFF-8080 cables at $10 a piece as well as a pci internal/exteneral adapter for the LSI card that worked since these wouldn't be in the case.
So far I've spent roughly $120 on this setup.
Attempts
When I first got the card, I was able to throw it in my windows PC, and find drives! From my college days I had a legitimate copy of VMWare workstation 8? that they then upgraded to 12. After trying to do a trueenas setup on this, I was unsuccessful (later found out whatever version i have does not support pass-through). After getting this server running, and installing the card. I've been able to install proxmox but here is where my questions arrive, and where I'm venturing into uncharted territory.
Questions
Other than the existential "what the hell am i doing", my biggest question is how can I install (or reinstall) proxmox on this server with what I assume is a hardware raid on two drives...and then after get promox to do passthrough on ONLY ONE of the two installed raid controllers? Does IOMMU have options that I can change when I get to that?
When I installed proxmox I basically just loosely followed youtubes and did the next...next...next. It used ext4 and as far as i can tell it just installed to one drive? Is pulling either drive separately and booting the only way to check this? There were options to use like Raid1.
Closing
If you've read this far, sincerely, thank you. I appreciate your time, and any advice you could give me.
