I’m looking for a solution to connect some SAS disks to my HP dl380g9 to use with ZFS. I understand that HW RAID with ZFS is a big no-no and that a HBA in IT mode is the best solution as that is passing the disks through to the OS as-is.
Some cards can only be put into an HBA mode which also presents the disks to the OS individually, but it is not a true pass through, as far is I understood. It should be a lot better than HW Raid, though.
Picking up such a card would be the simplest solution for me. P440ar cards are available for dirt cheap, don’t require a PCI slot and I can re-use the existing SAS cables without worrying that whatever a non HP card uses does not plug into into the backplane of the HP dl380g9.
Is HBA mode fine for ZFS? Or should I make sure to pick up an LSI card that supports the true IT mode?
RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Initiator Target mode and Host Bus Adapter mode are interchangable terms for the same thing. The card has 2 modes, one is RAID (don’t use this) and the other is Initiator-Target or HBA mode.
ZFS needs direct disk access so flash the IT .bin for HBA mode using the P20 (latest) drivers and you’re g2g.