MegaRAID JBOD substitute

Solution 1:

I run this exact setup. MegaCli has a useful option called something like CfgEachDskRaid0 which will configure every disk on the array as raid0, ensuring a consistent configuration.

It's not true that it's impossible to hot swap disks with this setup, although it is clunky to do so (especially because MegaCli itself is hardly a paragon of usability), basically involves deconfiguring the old raid array and reconfiguring a new one every time you want to swap a disk.

Solution 2:

Are you trying to use the card for a software RAID solution like ZFS? Which controller are you using? If this is the case, using multiple RAID-0 logical drives will create an ugly situation if you need to swap a failed disk. The replacement drive will not be recognized until you reboot/reinitialize a new RAID-0 array containing the failed disk. It's not worth it. Use a proper HBA if possible, OR use the hardware RAID functions of the controller with ZFS (sometimes it makes sense).

Please refer to: ZFS SAS/SATA controller recommendations

Solution 3:

Don't do this with 24 drives. Get a different controller. Anything based on the LSI 1068e (which is a bottom-of-the-line option for many Dell and IBM servers) will support JBOD. Dell calls it a SAS 6/iR and IBM calls it a ServeRAID BR10i.