Looking to move my Unraid install over to a Dell R720, but hitting some issues.


NVS1

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So, the past few days or so my UnRaid server was randomly restarting and generally having a fit. I haven't changed anything recently so this was relatively new. Running a memtest showed no memory errors, syslog showed nothing of note as it would just stop recording, then immediatley start recording the boot sequence in the syslog (no obvious kernel errors, panics, etc. from what I can tell)... I assumed it was a power issue, so I went about replacing the PSU with a new spare one I had. After booting, I found that two of my drives were no longer being detected (in the BIOS even), so I assumed it had to be an issue with my motherboard at this point. I know the first option is to swap out the SATA cables, and I thought had some, but can't find some spares.

 

So where I'm at now is I've pulled all the drives out, and placed them into the Dell R720. While I was busy going around and removing drives, and installing them, I did boot the system into Unraid just to confirm it would boot up without issues. It did and no immediate issues (though no drives were actually installed at this time).

 

So after plugging all my various drives into the various bays, I then booted it up, and was greeted with a big old warning from Unraid showing that no drives were detected. I could see the system at the very least detected the drives since all the lights for each bay was lit up, but regardless Unraid didn't see any.

 

I believe the issue may be surrounding my hardware RAID controller... I have not setup a hardware RAID, nor do I want to (I don't want to lose any data on these drives), and was hoping that Unraid would just come online and see everything.

 

From what I can read however, it seems that I have a PERC 710 RAID controller (I think it's a Mini?), which does not play well with Unraid. I'm fairly new to the Dell server (previous build was just with consumer parts (Asus motherboard, Intel i5, etc.), so I want to make sure I'm getting right hardware for this.

 

Moving forward, I believe all I would need to get is a Dell H310 RAID controller, right? Once I get that, I can replace the H710, and I still shouldn't need to bother creating any hardware RAID configuration, right?

 

For what it's worth, this is my server here:

image.thumb.png.e1b5df78e6499dbd9ef82c4abdbfdac9.png

 

And If I'm correct, this is the H710 mini?

image.thumb.png.64fa3ac66100eed2315805580c366f8f.png

 

Guess my other concern is how to go about swapping that.. it looks easy enough, but I assume if this is the H710 mini, I need to replace it with a H310 mini that would install in the same spot, right?

 

 

Another question that is of less importance, but I may as well ask... My Cache drive is an SSD.. It appears to be installed well enough in the drive bay (the bay light comes on), but the bays are not really designed for an SSD.

 

Anyways, I would ideally like to get some sort of PCI card / adapter that would fit inside the R720, and allow me to mount the SSD internally which would still give me the usable cache drive, while also freeing up the drive bay. Alternatively, I could always go with an nVME drive if there was a similar adapter I could install. 

 

Anyways, any help is greatly appreciated. 

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Was doing a bit more reading on this, and it seems that I could go with either the Dell H310 Mini, or the Dell H310 PCI card. The PCI card would install in the PCI bays just behind the H710 and it looks like I'd simply swap the cables that are currently plugged into the board for the H710 and plug those into the H310 card. Or I can get a mini, and replace the H710 Mini with that one. I don't think there's really any positives or negatives one way or the other.

 

The two I'm looking at are here:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Dell-H310-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-w-LSI-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162834659601?hash=item25e9b3b911:g:UxcAAOSwWrxcPvQv

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Dell-H310-mini-monolithic-K09CJ-with-LSI-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/163672512791?epid=2024756319&hash=item261ba45917:g:STwAAOSwi2xcyU5B

 

Hopefully I'm on the right path here. 

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8 hours ago, Vr2Io said:

Prefer this option because you no need care about original cable, otherwise you need reroute the cable to add-on PCIe card.

Everything else I wrote above seems inline with what I want to do then? Any concerns with losing any data, or should everything fairly gracefully move over? All the same HDD's, Parity, and cache drive is installed.

 

8 hours ago, pabohoney1 said:

You have the option to flash the H710 you currently have yourself:
https://fohdeesha.com/docs/H710-D1/

I was able to follow these instructions and flash the one that came with my R720xd

 

Hmm.. this is interesting for sure. I assume worst case scenario, if I happened to brick the H710 doing this, it's just a matter of swapping it out with the H310, right? No other damage to the system, BIOS, etc.

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10 minutes ago, NVS1 said:

Everything else I wrote above seems inline with what I want to do then?

If you use add-on PCIe card then you need route those SAS cable from motherboard to add-on card. So, they are not inline. This are cable issue only.

Edited by Vr2Io
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25 minutes ago, Vr2Io said:

If you use add-on PCIe card then you need route those SAS cable from motherboard to add-on card. So, they are not inline. This are cable issue only.

Sorry, guess that's not what I meant... I just mean the rest of my post and what I plan to do seems to be correct. Nothing obvious that I'm wanting to do or trying to do that I'm missing, etc.

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9 minutes ago, NVS1 said:

Sorry, guess that's not what I meant... I just mean the rest of my post and what I plan to do seems to be correct. Nothing obvious that I'm wanting to do or trying to do that I'm missing, etc.

Note, never mind the misunderstanding. Flash H710 should be best the options.

Edited by Vr2Io
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