Is an HP P812 (ciss(4) RAID) usable for ZFS?

[Peter Eriksson]

You really want the HP Smart (ciss driver) controllers to run in HBA mode when using ZFS. However, only the newer ones does support that mode (as far as I know).

I’m using the HP Smart HBA H241 controller cards and they work pretty well. You’ll need to patch the ciss driver if you ever try to connect more than 48 drives to one though:

   https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=246279


This web page https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2188239-freenas-on-dl180-g6-and-smart-array-p812-in-hba-mode claims that

  P812 & P410 can _not_ be put into HBA mode
  P822 & P420 CAN be put into HBA mode

My personal experience is with the P400 (can NOT be put into HBA mode) and the H241 (works).

So your only choice is probably to create single-disk LUNs… (What I’m doing on the P400 - but that’s a pain…)

—
Peter Eriksson <pen at lysator.liu.se>

> On 9 Sep 2020, at 04:12, Mel Pilgrim <list_freebsd at bluerosetech.com> wrote:
> 
> [Posting this here as this list gets seen by many ZFS-aware eyeballs, but if there is a better list please tell me.]
> 
> I've gotten my hands on a couple of HP Smart Array P812 RAID controllers, but I can't tell if they'll work for ZFS.
> 
> I know they're supported by ciss(4), but queries have gotten me conflicting answers about HBA/JBOD capability, including that HBA mode might be OS-dependent. These do support creating single-disk RAID0 plexes, but I'd rather not have RAID logic in the path at all if I can avoid it.
> 
> Does anyone know if these will work as HBAs for ZFS on FreeBSD? If not, has anyone used the stated workaround and gotten good results?
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