Hi there, I would like to test out unraid/TrueNAS/ZFS in general and wondering about the best approach with my Dell r720xd. I’ve just picked up this server so it’s not loaded yet, using it a test bed to expand my knowledge more than anything. Currently theres two SATA SSD’s in slot 1, 2 and a couple of HDD’s in slow 11,12. The two SSD’s are raid 1 with proxmox running as a hypervisor. Disks in slots 11, 12 not currently being used. Once I have the config decided I will fill up this server with new disks.

Currently these are all connected via the embedded Dell PERC H710 mini raid controller. However I want to try JBOD mode which, as I understand it, cannot coexist on the same controller along with RAID.

The server also came with two Dell 6gbps sas h200, they’ve been flashed to IT mode, they are in PCI slots in the rear and currently disabled (POST reports), they have two what I believe is some type of SFP slots on each card, so I’m assuming I can’t use this controller and plug it in to the backplane for the front HDD slots to take over control of these slots instead of the embedded PERC H710?

If the above is not going to work then as far as I can tell the next best option is to configure all disks into RAID 0 with the PERC H710 controller, which should let me manage them as individual disks in say Proxmox/TruNAS/UNRAID as a combination of software RAID, JBOD. So I can mirror the VM SSD’s and JBOD the HDD’s for ZFS file system.

Trying to understand the whole concept here and put it in to practice so excuse me if any terminology etc. is incorrect.

Cheers,

Will