How to install ZFS on Dell Poweredge server and Dell disk array without using the RAID controller
How to set up ZFS using a Dell Poweredge and disk arrays (DAS).
I am completely new to this and have the following questions:
- Does the RAID card need to be configured? (e.g. virtual device)
- Do I need to turn the RAID card off in BIOS?
- How does the array appear in linux? Is it listed under /dev or do other packages need to be installed before it can be seen?
Solution 1:
It depends:
H200/300 and PERC9 (ie: 330, 730, 830) cards have the capability to work in
pass-throughmode, meaning that the disks can be directly presented to the operating system. To do that, you simply need to use unconfigured disks (ie: with no RAID metadata) and to avoid configuring any RAID array (VDISK in DELL terminology)H700/710 cards does not have
pass-throughcapability. As a workaround, you can configure each disk as an independent RAID0 array and build your ZFS pool from these "fake", single-disk arrays. This is not recommended, though, as ZFS really expect to have low-level access to your disks. You should be better off using a classical RAID5/10 array and formatting is with ZFS.as DELL PERC cards really are rebranded LSI gear, it is sometime possible to reflash them with LSI firmware, which may enable passthrough. This is card/firmware dependant, though.
Finally, as the backplane is connected to the RAID card, turning it off will make the disks inaccessible.