Dell T620 with XCP-NG + TrueNAS VM (with Startech 8 Port SATA passthrough)

Hello,

I currently have a dedicated Dell T420 (2 Processors and 128MB ram) running TrueNAS as my primary storage. I am thinking of adding another TrueNAS to my environment for a backup to my primary NAS server. I didn’t want to add another server since I already have a Dell T620 dedicated to XCP-NG, so why not use this to run a TrueNAS VM using passthrough.

The Dell T620 with XCP-NG 8.1 currently has a H710P raid controller that manages the 8 sata disks in my system. I am planning to add a StartTech 8 port SATA PCIe Card - PCI Express 6Gbps SATA Expansion Adapter Card with 4 Host Controllers - SATA PCIe Controller Card - PCI-e x4 Gen 2 to SATA III - SATA HDD/SSD (8P6G-PCIE-SATA-CARD) as passthrough to a TrueNAS VM inside XCP-NG. All this being said:

(1) Has anyone used the StarTech 8 Port controller with any success, specifically with a Dell T620? (link to the controller StarTech 8 Port Controller - Amazon Link)

(2) Recommendations should this be not the way to go for a backup TrueNAS server?

(3) Any harm in running XCP-NG on a redundant SD drives on the server so that the OS is completely decoupled from the disks?

Thank you,
Sam.