HP SAS expander and Nexenta/open indiana safe?

[bp_968]

I've seen some comments on hardforum about issues using an expander with nexenta / OI can cause issues. Does anyone on here use a similar combination and have any issues with it?

As a side note, is the community version of nexenta's 18TB limit a limit on total usable space (so if you built it using raid 10 you could have 36TB of drives) or is it 18TB RAW space, so a raid10 setup would be limited to 9TB of total usable space?

Thanks!

 

[gea]

I've seen some comments on hardforum about issues using an expander with nexenta / OI can cause issues. Does anyone on here use a similar combination and have any issues with it?

As a side note, is the community version of nexenta's 18TB limit a limit on total usable space (so if you built it using raid 10 you could have 36TB of drives) or is it 18TB RAW space, so a raid10 setup would be limited to 9TB of total usable space?

Thanks!

There is nothing wrong with expanders in general.
It is only suggested to use SAS disks. All reported problems are with Sata disks.
My suggestion is, if you use Sata disks or if you can avoid expanders, attach disks directly to one or more controllers.
I even use 6 x IBM 1015 controllers in my 50bay Chenbro cases. Faster and guaranteed trouble free.

NexentaStor CE limits usage to noncommercial usage and 18 TB Raw.
Raw is the sum of all disks not used capacity.

ex
if you build a raid-10 setup from 10 x 2 TB disks, you have a usable capacity of 10TB but Raw capacity of 20 TB which is not allowed.
see NexentaStor Project - CommunityEdition - NexentaStor Project

 

[bp_968]

Thanks for the info. I'll probably go with openindiana then since I can see the array out growing 18TB RAW reasonably quickly. I "can" avoid the expander, specifically if it causes problems. It just means I'll sell the one I have (I have 2 8 port SAS cards and room in the server for them so I'll just go that route for now).

Is the SATA + Expander issue only with Nexenta or has it also been seen in OI as well?

Thanks.

There is nothing wrong with expanders in general.
It is only suggested to use SAS disks. All reported problems are with Sata disks.
My suggestion is, if you use Sata disks or if you can avoid expanders, attach disks directly to one or more controllers.
I even use 6 x IBM 1015 controllers in my 50bay Chenbro cases. Faster and guaranteed trouble free.

NexentaStor CE limits usage to noncommercial usage and 18 TB Raw.
Raw is the sum of all disks not used capacity.

ex
if you build a raid-10 setup from 10 x 2 TB disks, you have a usable capacity of 10TB but Raw capacity of 20 TB which is not allowed.
see NexentaStor Project - CommunityEdition - NexentaStor Project