Unraid with Dell R730XD

[Nishadul Haque]

I have purchased Dell R730XD server for configure Unraid file server. Dell R730XD specification is processor 2 X E5-2667 V3, RAM DDR4 128GB, HDD controller (RAID Card) H730, HDD 6 to 12.

 

I want to know all hardware is OK for Unraid or need to change anything. HDD controller H730 is OK ?

If I start Dell server with Unraid pen drive then is it make any problem.

Please help/suggestion me how to configure it, I am new with Unraid and Dell R730XD

 

Best regards,

Nishadul

[limawaken]

wow so nice, i'm jealous.

I'm far from being an expert but what i gather from here is that the SAS controller is the most important piece.

it has to be a plain HBA controller. not RAID. most of the time you'll find recommendations to purchase a SAS controller in IT mode or get one that you can flash yourself.

personally i'd buy one from ebay that has already been flashed to IT mode and tested with UNRAID. there are a few sellers on there selling this.

 

other than that unraid seems to run on whatever you can think of. there was a guy here who recently got unraid working perfectly on a 12 year old QNAP.

 

there is a topic here on this forum about Dell poweredge servers. its old, but should be still relevant. try to looking for it, i think a lot of your questions would have answers there.

[bryansj]

I just got a R730XD as well.  You can use the H730 RAID controller as is.  You just need to go into each drive in iDrac or the controller config and mark every drive as "non-RAID".  The other option is to change the controller to HBA mode.  There is no need for a different controller card or IT mode.

[JonathanM]

17 minutes ago, bryansj said:

I just got a R730XD as well.  You can use the H730 RAID controller as is.  You just need to go into each drive in iDrac or the controller config and mark every drive as "non-RAID".  The other option is to change the controller to HBA mode.  There is no need for a different controller card or IT mode.

Just to confirm, the drive id's are passed through to Unraid unchanged and the SMART data is automatically populated when doing this? If either condition isn't met, there are issues that can come up.

[bryansj]

2 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Just to confirm, the drive id's are passed through to Unraid unchanged and the SMART data is automatically populated when doing this? If either condition isn't met, there are issues that can come up.

My drives were found by unRAID once I marked them as non-RAID in the H730 controller.  I am showing SMART data in the drive properties.  Not sure how to determine if the drive IDs were changed in any way other than confirming my array was picked up.

[JonathanM]

3 minutes ago, bryansj said:

Not sure how to determine if the drive IDs were changed in any way other than confirming my array was picked up.

The issue is if you need to move a drive to a different controller Unraid will not know it's the same drive if the ID is changed. Do you have any SATA ports NOT on the controller that you could connect a drive?

[bryansj]

1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

The issue is if you need to move a drive to a different controller Unraid will not know it's the same drive if the ID is changed. Do you have any SATA ports NOT on the controller that you could connect a drive?

I've moved these drives across different cards over the years.  I just moved them this morning from a H730 mini to a H730P mini if that matters.  I've moved other drives from a LSI IT mode card to various Dell cards with no issue.  I haven't moved from a Dell server card to an IT mode LSI. 

 

I'm not really interested it testing unnecessary drive swaps so I'll have to update way down the road when I move to a new server.

[TStavley]

just posting to find this later when i get started on my own

[J OBrien]

I just migrated from dell r420 h310 (LSI firmware) to dell r730 h730p mini (dell firmware) without any config changes.  Before hooking up the drives make sure to set the h730p mini to HBA mode by IDrac or bios interface.  AFter HBA mode is set power off... hook up the drives and you are done.

 

I run 4 cache sas drives and 1 unassigned ssd for appdata.  This is how Unraid reads it:

 

[limawaken]

I'm also really interested in these r730 servers. but SAS drives are so expensive, i won't be able to afford them. will normal SATA drives work?

[Bannie]

Hi i have DELL R730XD with the 10GB Daughter Card and SAS Drives and a SSD SATA for your info SAS or SATA Drives work fine once in HBA Mode Unraid will see them , the only issues i have at the moment is transfer speeds seems to be really slow , I can transfer from my Desktop to the Server running Windows 2022 speeds of 850mb but in Unraid same machine same drives 350mb max and then drops right down to 5mb , not sure if anyone else has a this transfer speed issue ...... so it seems to be UNRAID Issues drivers ? for NIC card still trying to find out tried ZFS XFS and BTRFS all the same if anyone case shed any light before i ditch UNRAID as i Cant live with the Poor Transfer speed  and go back to Windows