How to add more harddrives and clean up the setup?

[LocutusPrime]

Hello everyone
I am currently trying to rebuild my NAS setup. At the moment I have 2 servers running:

 

- HP Proliant DL380 G7 with Unraid 
- HP Workstation Z800 with Truenas with 12 x 3.5" 4TB harddisks

 

In the HP workstation are 4 harddrives installed and a HBA card with 2 internal SFF-8087 connectors, from these I have 2 cables SFF-8087 to 4xSata through an empty slot to 2 harddrive cages with 4 harddrives each and a separate power supply. The HP Proliant server is running Unraid which mounts the TrueNas shares. On it runs a Plex server, Minecraft server, etc. 

 

I'm now trying to simplify the setup a bit, update it and try to accommodate more hard drives and possibly even save some power. I have an HP Proliant DL380 G9 that I would like to use with 8 slots for 2.5" hard drives and an HP MSA 2000 Model 2012i with 12 3.5" slots, but I need to find a console cable to reset the MSA because I got it used with an existing configuration on it (if that is even possible). I would have an additional 4 x 4TB 3.5" drives in addition to the 12 x 4TB drives already installed that I would like to put to use and also have another external hard drive cage (Icy Dock).

 

I would like to work if possible only with Unraid and only with one machine (and possibly the MSA), i would prefer using the HP Proliant DL380 G9, because of performance and power saving possibilities because of Minecraft Server and Plex which is regularly accessed by up to 8 people and as many hard drives as possible. To buy many hard disks with higher capacity is not possible at the moment. I could invest a maximum of 300$ for further hardware, like more HBA cards, etc.

Can anyone help me how to put this setup together sensibly, so that it might be a bit neater and I have as much performance as possible? My problem e.g. with the HBA cards is that they always have SFF-8088 connectors on the outside (instead of SFF-8087), where again there are no cables to normal SATA connectors or the described problem with the MSA (additionally i'm not even sure whether the MSA is a good idea to use for this purpose or not), ...

 

Any help is very much appreciated and sorry for the chaotic text >.< 

[LIGISTX]

4 minutes ago, LocutusPrime said:

Hello everyone
I am currently trying to rebuild my NAS setup. At the moment I have 2 servers running:

 

- HP Proliant DL380 G7 with Unraid 
- HP Workstation Z800 with Truenas with 12 x 3.5" 4TB harddisks

 

In the HP workstation are 4 harddrives installed and a HBA card with 2 internal SFF-8087 connectors, from these I have 2 cables SFF-8087 to 4xSata through an empty slot to 2 harddrive cages with 4 harddrives each and a separate power supply. The HP Proliant server is running Unraid which mounts the TrueNas shares. On it runs a Plex server, Minecraft server, etc. 

 

I'm now trying to simplify the setup a bit, update it and try to accommodate more hard drives and possibly even save some power. I have an HP Proliant DL380 G9 that I would like to use with 8 slots for 2.5" hard drives and an HP MSA 2000 Model 2012i with 12 3.5" slots, but I need to find a console cable to reset the MSA because I got it used with an existing configuration on it (if that is even possible). I would have an additional 4 x 4TB 3.5" drives in addition to the 12 x 4TB drives already installed that I would like to put to use and also have another external hard drive cage (Icy Dock).

 

I would like to work if possible only with Unraid and only with one machine (and possibly the MSA), i would prefer using the HP Proliant DL380 G9, because of performance and power saving possibilities because of Minecraft Server and Plex which is regularly accessed by up to 8 people and as many hard drives as possible. To buy many hard disks with higher capacity is not possible at the moment. I could invest a maximum of 300$ for further hardware, like more HBA cards, etc.

Can anyone help me how to put this setup together sensibly, so that it might be a bit neater and I have as much performance as possible? My problem e.g. with the HBA cards is that they always have SFF-8088 connectors on the outside (instead of SFF-8087), where again there are no cables to normal SATA connectors or the described problem with the MSA (additionally i'm not even sure whether the MSA is a good idea to use for this purpose or not), ...

 

Any help is very much appreciated and sorry for the chaotic text >.< 

I am so confused, why are you using unraid and truenas and mounting truenas shares to your unraid box? I would use unraid exclusively, or proxmox,with truenas under it - this is what I do. But if you plan to continually add storage, obviously ZFS isn’t the answer. 
 

You can get SAS expanders to add more SAS ports, and then run more SAS to 4x SATA cables. A single SAS expanded is like 30-40 bucks iirc, and they have 5 ports. So you can run a single SAS cable from HBA to expander, and that will provide 4 SAS, so 16 SATA, plus the 4 SATA from the other SAS to SATA cable on the HBA itself. And you can always add another expander as well. 
 

I would try and transition everything to unraid, but the issue will be, how are you actually going to do this? You will need to be able to migrate all of the data off the ZFS array in order to add those drives to to your unraid system as that will destroy the data on the discs which previously were your ZFS array. 

[Noble3212]

2 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

I am so confused, why are you using unraid and truenas and mounting truenas shares to your unraid box? I would use unraid exclusively, or proxmox,with truenas under it - this is what I do. But if you plan to continually add storage, obviously ZFS isn’t the answer. 
 

You can get SAS expanders to add more SAS ports, and then run more SAS to 4x SATA cables. A single SAS expanded is like 30-40 bucks iirc, and they have 5 ports. So you can run a single SAS cable from HBA to expander, and that will provide 4 SAS, so 16 SATA, plus the 4 SATA from the other SAS to SATA cable on the HBA itself. And you can always add another expander as well. 
 

I would try and transition everything to unraid, but the issue will be, how are you actually going to do this? You will need to be able to migrate all of the data off the ZFS array in order to add those drives to to your unraid system as that will destroy the data on the discs which previously were your ZFS array. 

Unraid and proxmox is deff. the better option here. I tried to use truenas and it sucked. Unraid actually worked faster and better. 

[LIGISTX]

53 minutes ago, Noble3212 said:

Unraid and proxmox is deff. the better option here. I tried to use truenas and it sucked. Unraid actually worked faster and better. 

What was wrong with truenas..? I have been using it for years without any issues. It’s a fantastic option, and ZFS is without a doubt the best file system currently available. It just… is designed for enterprise, and thus has some compromises for home use cases. 
 

That said, I still think OP should use unraid for this setup. 

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, NastyFlytrap said:

What purpose would proxmox fullfil in this scenario?

Truenas as a hypervisor to host VM’s next to truenas. Truenas CORE you really don’t want to do anything with VM’s or containers, SCALE is more friendly as it’s built for this, but it’s so new I personally wouldn’t go down that path…

 

Proxmox is a tried and true hypervisor, so using it to host VM’s (for Plex, or whatever other applications you want) next to a VM of truenas CORE gives you the best of all worlds. I have loved layout this myself. 

[LocutusPrime]

14 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I am so confused, why are you using unraid and truenas and mounting truenas shares to your unraid box? I would use unraid exclusively, or proxmox,with truenas under it - this is what I do. But if you plan to continually add storage, obviously ZFS isn’t the answer. 
 

You can get SAS expanders to add more SAS ports, and then run more SAS to 4x SATA cables. A single SAS expanded is like 30-40 bucks iirc, and they have 5 ports. So you can run a single SAS cable from HBA to expander, and that will provide 4 SAS, so 16 SATA, plus the 4 SATA from the other SAS to SATA cable on the HBA itself. And you can always add another expander as well. 
 

I would try and transition everything to unraid, but the issue will be, how are you actually going to do this? You will need to be able to migrate all of the data off the ZFS array in order to add those drives to to your unraid system as that will destroy the data on the discs which previously were your ZFS array. 

I started with Freenas (later Truenas) on the HP Z800 when i got that one for free a few years back, started with 4 harddrives and then it grew and grew. Last year i was able to get the HP Proliant server quite cheap and since I watched a lot of LTT videos I heard about unraid and thought i give that a try on the new machine, but i didnt had a good way to mount more harddrives to the proliant server, so i just let the Z800 run and mounted the shares to Unraid where i run Plex and Minecraft Server, since i somehow always managed to brake Plex and Minecraft on Truenas, mostly when doing updates and i was sick of always setting them up new. And in Unraid i never had problems with that, so my plan is (as also recommended by you) to move completely to Unraid. But if possible i would like to that on the proliant server, since it is much newer than the old HP Z800.

 

So what i need to figure out ist, how the best way is to connect all this harddrives to the proliant server. As mentioned i have the MSA (if i'm able to reset the configuration), but someone mentioned, that a MSA is not suitable for this job (but not why). Another way would be to just directly attach the drives as before, but i would prefer a less chaotic way, than just rooting cables from the inside out through open slots, but there is the problem with the diffrent SFF plugs.

 

 

[LocutusPrime]

19 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

What was wrong with truenas..? I have been using it for years without any issues. It’s a fantastic option, and ZFS is without a doubt the best file system currently available. It just… is designed for enterprise, and thus has some compromises for home use cases. 
 

That said, I still think OP should use unraid for this setup. 

you're right ZFS is really awesome, but i would like to take advantage of unraids possibility to combine harddrives of diffrent sizes, to be able to attach bigger drives (if i have the budget in the future) to slowly increase storage space without more physical drives

[LIGISTX]

2 hours ago, LocutusPrime said:

So what i need to figure out ist, how the best way is to connect all this harddrives to the proliant server.

Use a SAS HBA and a SAS expander? Logistically, how are you going to do this? 
 

You want to use the drives that are currently making up the truenas array? If so, what are you going to do with that data? You need to wipe the drives in the ZFS array in order to add them to unraid, so what is the plan for this?

[LocutusPrime]

53 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Use a SAS HBA and a SAS expander? Logistically, how are you going to do this? 
 

You want to use the drives that are currently making up the truenas array? If so, what are you going to do with that data? You need to wipe the drives in the ZFS array in order to add them to unraid, so what is the plan for this?

First of course thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it. Yes the HBA and the expander sounds great, problem is just, that the SAS connections are usually inside the case and not on the outside, the ones i found with connectors on the outside always have the wrong SAS connector (SFF-8088 instead of SFF-8087), but i am not able to fit the drives into the chassis, so i was looking if someone knows a HBA-card or extender with SFF-8087 connectors on the outside or another solution how to cleanly connect all the harddrives. If there is no clean solution i will go for the cable out from the slot solution of course.

 

For the logistics... I have 4 new empty 4TB drives and the proliant server already has 8TB of storage, so in total i will have around 15TB of usable space on the new server. On the Truenas I always have 3 times 4x4TB in one Pool with each having one disk redundancy, so i can clear one pool and can move the disks to the new server, etc. If for some reason that doesnt work, i have some disk lying around where i will be parking the data while moving the disks.

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, LocutusPrime said:

First of course thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it. Yes the HBA and the expander sounds great, problem is just, that the SAS connections are usually inside the case and not on the outside, the ones i found with connectors on the outside always have the wrong SAS connector (SFF-8088 instead of SFF-8087), but i am not able to fit the drives into the chassis, so i was looking if someone knows a HBA-card or extender with SFF-8087 connectors on the outside or another solution how to cleanly connect all the harddrives. If there is no clean solution i will go for the cable out from the slot solution of course.

 

For the logistics... I have 4 new empty 4TB drives and the proliant server already has 8TB of storage, so in total i will have around 15TB of usable space on the new server. On the Truenas I always have 3 times 4x4TB in one Pool with each having one disk redundancy, so i can clear one pool and can move the disks to the new server, etc. If for some reason that doesnt work, i have some disk lying around where i will be parking the data while moving the disks.

Gotcha. 
 

So you need to try and use the chsssis the truenas drives are living in as basically a JBOD box? I am not as familiar with that, but you will want to run SAS to an expander inside the truenas box and break out to SATA from there. Basically just use the PSU and the drive bays. 
 

Or… find a large PC case and assuming the mobo is ATX, just transfer it all into a nice big case that can hold all the drives (this may not be possible for many reasons). Or…. Find a Supermicro 4U, but those have gotten really expensive since Covid.