Hardware RAID or software for ZFS

[Arthur Chance]

On 18/11/2014 15:28, bsd at todoo.biz wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I would need your help in order to figure out which will be the best
 > in order to setup a server which will be used as a Poudriere server.
>
> My question is related to the usage of hardware RAID controller (JBOD)
 > or software based controller (graid)
>
> Server we are targeting is a SuperMicro 1018R-WC0R - 1U
>
> I used to build my server using an HBA such as LSI SAS 9207-8i or LSI
 > SAS 9201-16i Then I’ll configure the HBA as JBOD so that disks can be
 > presented correctly to the system so that we can build our ZFS FS on
 > top of that.
>
>
> My sysadmin suggested me to get rid of the HBA and use direct
 > connectivity and Graid.
>
>
> I would like to have some feedback on various aspects :
>
> 1. performance
> 2. usability
> 3. problem one might have encountered

If you're intending to use ZFS don't use JBOD or graid, just tell zpool 
to create a pool out of individual disks using raidz (or raidz[23] if 
you have enough disks).

As for your hardware choice, I'll let others with more experience than 
me answer.