ZFS with Raid Controller

[keroex]

Hi guys, I would like to know if there is any way in which I can use ZFS (to be able to use Replication) if I have a hardware raid controller.
Can ZFS be configured as a single disk and have the raid handled by the hardware?

My hardware is 2:

HPE Proliant DL360 Gen10 8SFF CTO with HPE Smart Array P408i-a SR Gen 10 2 Gb Caché SAS 12Gb

Thx a lot
Regards
Federico

 

[aaron]

"Can" yes... is it a good idea? No. It will usually cost you a bit of performance, you take away the self-healing possibilities in case of failures of bit rot and complicate the management of the disks much more as you need to deal with the RAID controller as well.

Can you define single disks as non-raid or JBOD? That should at least pass the disks as raw as possible to the OS.

 

[_gabriel]

if your disks are SATA , there is an internal connector from SATA controller of the motherboard to plug the SAS cable from Drive Cage.

 

[keroex]

"Can" yes... is it a good idea? No. It will usually cost you a bit of performance, you take away the self-healing possibilities in case of failures of bit rot and complicate the management of the disks much more as you need to deal with the RAID controller as well.

Can you define single disks as non-raid or JBOD? That should at least pass the disks as raw as possible to the OS.

Thx for the reply.
In this case I already have raid and standby disks defined by hardware, and I would like to leave it that way since I have support when it comes to the server, disks and raid controller.
The only feature I'd like to take advantage of in ZFS is the ability to mirror the VMs' disks.

Regards
Federico

 

[Dunuin]

Also see the ZFS documentation on HW raid controllers: https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-d...uning/Hardware.html#hardware-raid-controllers

 

[auranext]

Keroex,

The best secure and stability way requieres that ZFS access directly to the disk
On HPE Gen10 with P840 you can set some disk in passthrough mode and assign others to hw raid
for example you can install Proxmox on hw raid (a mirror of 2 disk is fine) so the server survives if a disk die and P840 supports hotplug replacement
The other disk (in passthrough mode) can be assigned to ZFS raid, so the VM datas survives one or more disk die (depending on the number of disks and raid mode chosen) and ZFS replication is possible between cluster nodes.
ZFS supports hotplug replacement, operation is safe and easy.
I have many 2 nodes Clusters based on this design but with hw a bit older (HP gen9), one gen10 for testing
we are currently considering the upgrading to gen10 or gen10 plus

Regards
Maxime

 

[npbazan]

Hey Im new in proxmox and I have the same issue here.. 8 SAS drives 8TB in raid 5 in dell r780 making 1 virtual drive of 56tb...

Now, running proxmox... I made zfs over this virtusldisk.

Yes sorry for your eyes... Im making my best reading documentation and watching tutorials.

This will be the production server for a company where virtual machines would be located.

if this work as is it, I join other node and move the machines to the new one, and convert the controller to HBA and order in ZFS directly yo the disk and get back the machines to this server.