Server Conversion Possible?

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Truckin

Member
Jun 4, 2021
42
8
8
Hi,

I currently have an Intel Xeon E5-2697 (X2) Windows Server 2019 system setup with a 20TB RAID 6 (Using an Adaptec RAID 6805/6805Q Card) plex system/server setup. However, I was looking to move this configuration over to TrueNAS.....but I'm not sure this is feasible...? What would be required to convert the OS from the Server 2019 over to TrueNAS and be able to have the 20TB RAID 6 data transferred over as well? I of course would want to set up a RAID of some sort in TrueNAS as well....but I assume the Adaptec Raid card would not work under that OS correctly? I am looking to convert to get away from all the extra fees we have to pay in order to use the windows server OS. The system would be used for plex only with streaming locally and remotely (Sometimes out of state) on multiple different devices such as TV, Roku, Apple TV, iPhone, Android, etc.

Is this possible?

Thanks for your input!
Truckin
 

asmith

New Member
Jun 2, 2019
10
7
3
Hopefully you have the current array backed up (somewhere). If so, then nuking the OS/data from orbit and transfering back to the new truenas array is your best option.

The raid card may be usable if it can be flashed for use as a simple HBA (host bus adapter). Random truenas forum posting would suggest Adaptec is not recommended...ever? Need some help with Adaptec 6805E

As far as streaming to multiple different devices, that will be dependent upon your media format.
 

Truckin

Member
Jun 4, 2021
42
8
8
Ok,
So, if we want to convert to TrueNAS we would need to move the 25TB approx. of data to another location....rebuild the HW RAID 6 array but using the ZFS setup for Raid 6 and install TrueNAS. So, my question then becomes is the ZFS RAID 6 option will it have decent read/write performance? We will have two SSDs one for the OS and the other for cache if needed.....
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
1,050
437
83
Ok,
So, if we want to convert to TrueNAS we would need to move the 25TB approx. of data to another location....rebuild the HW RAID 6 array but using the ZFS setup for Raid 6 and install TrueNAS. So, my question then becomes is the ZFS RAID 6 option will it have decent read/write performance? We will have two SSDs one for the OS and the other for cache if needed.....
ZFS is both file system and disk/volume manager, so hardware raid controller isn't needed nor supported. You'd need either to replace its firmware to work as HBA or get whole another HBA controller.
How many disks you have in that array? If you want to tune for performance there are few ways to do so.
 

Truckin

Member
Jun 4, 2021
42
8
8
ZFS is both file system and disk/volume manager, so hardware raid controller isn't needed nor supported. You'd need either to replace its firmware to work as HBA or get whole another HBA controller.
How many disks you have in that array? If you want to tune for performance there are few ways to do so.
There are approx. 6-8 drives which will depend on how we need to set it up. Currently 2 drives are just being used as hotswaps in the current setup. We can always add those if needed. We have a HBA controller but creating the USB drive with all required files to flash the P20 firmware on it has proven to be quite difficult even after trying to follow the online guides. We can turn the current Raid controller to JBOD setting but not sure if that still is risky and should be avoided.