I just bought a Dell T7910 and I'm thinking about setting up a scratch work space by adding four SATA drives internally to the integrated LSI SAS 3008 controller on the motherboard. Right now I'm thinking I don't want to use any RAID modes on the controller and instead probably go with a JBOD/spanning type of setup.
Here's a great tutorial that makes this look easy using mergerFS. But before committing to buying any drives:
Do I need to flash the onboard SAS controller to IT mode beforehand? I found a good youtube tutorial for exactly this by Art Of Server, but it still looks a little involved.
My understanding is that if I set up any volume configuration in software then it's best to use IT mode so that the underlying hardware RAID controller isn't clashing with the software. But I'm really new to this so I'm not sure. If this isn't easy I can just go with one of the RAID modes on the card. RAID 6 or 10 are great, but I'm just trying to maximize storage size and not redundancy.
Thanks for any insight!
Here's a great tutorial that makes this look easy using mergerFS. But before committing to buying any drives:
Do I need to flash the onboard SAS controller to IT mode beforehand? I found a good youtube tutorial for exactly this by Art Of Server, but it still looks a little involved.
My understanding is that if I set up any volume configuration in software then it's best to use IT mode so that the underlying hardware RAID controller isn't clashing with the software. But I'm really new to this so I'm not sure. If this isn't easy I can just go with one of the RAID modes on the card. RAID 6 or 10 are great, but I'm just trying to maximize storage size and not redundancy.
Thanks for any insight!