I am looking to replace my ageing home server that is running Ubuntu server with ZFS with some dockers like reverse proxy and so on. I was thinking of building again but also was looking at used servers like dell r720 and others, now due to them having there raid controller I am confused about ZFS, how are you using ZFS with these servers? The HP controller I currently have on my server I flashed to IT mode for ZFS, but does not look like these servers support flashing.
Thanks
Regards
There are controllers that support drive pass through (IT Mode) such as the one I reviewed in this video:
One thing to note about older controllers with IT mode, and maybe only HP cards. Even though they may pass through the disks as JBOD, they may not be seen as bootable, and may not be seen by all OS. The card in my G8 HP server with the card I had to buy does this, had to connect another drive to the onboard controller for the OS, and all the data drives to the card. FreeNAS thankfully saw all the data drives.
Thanks for replies. Not all server can do the pass through right? I am looking at dell r720 not xd do you know if it can pass the drives for ZFS? thank you very much.
Tom, do you think going this root for a home server is better then building your own? appreciate your thoughts .
Build it or buy it is a great budget debate. Use enterprise servers are affordable and generally work quite well. The build it route can go really good or really bad. They have a forum dedicated to that debate here https://www.ixsystems.com/community/forums/will-it-freenas-freenas-build-discussion.70/
From my experience, what won’t freenas to some level? The only computers I’ve tried and failed with have had some kind of issue, or the drive controller would not expose the raw disks.