Hardware RAID or software for ZFS

[Andrei Brezan]

On 11/18/14 17:01, Arthur Chance wrote:
> 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.
>

JBOD is presenting the disk directly to the OS so it is well suited for 
a ZFS setup. There are still raid controllers that have both raid 
capabilities and JBOD although some manufacturers try really hard to 
separate them for $ome reason. Most of the times you can re-write the 
firmware on such a device and have either raid capabilities or JBOD.