Time to replace my DIY Freenas

[BeTeP]

Is $48 is the right price for H220

I never paid more than $20 for the HBA. The current market price seems to be around $35. To put it in perspective, @BLinux sells it for $80+.
The reason I suggested that you might need one - you won't be able to control the boot order of the connected drives after enabling HBAMode on the P420i. So having another HBA handy would give you more options.

 

[Markess]

I assume this is in case P420i doesn't quite work right in Freenas?

The P420i is an Adaptec/PMC/Microsemi/Microchip Tech (the company changed hands a lot in the last few years) controller. As @BeTeP noted, its software switchable between HBA and RAID modes. But generally, the BSD backend of Free/TrueNAS hasn't supported the Adaptec (PMC, etc.) controllers as extensively as LSI, so some folks have had problems. There's been a lot of work over the years to bake support for them into BSD (if you google it, you'll find a lot of forum threads with "support was improved in version xxx, try it now..." comments) But, the general wisdom is to just use an LSI based controller and not have to worry about if its working right or not.

Some models of some generations of HP servers (I think including Gen 8 DL380) run fans at 100% if a non-HP card is detected. So, I'd recommend sticking to the HP branded ones if you go the add-in card route just to be safe.

 

[Terry Wallace]

Disable the onboard one and get the HP220 at 30$ online..freenas and your sanity will thank you later.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

Disable the onboard one and get the HP220 at 30$ online..freenas and your sanity will thank you later.

Yes, this exactly the plan. It seems like H420i besides having some random issues, is also doesn't do hot-swap in HBA mode. Booo
Definitely going to get another $30 LSI card, just not from Sonic - they seem to price theirs at $48.

One small pause for me is the build is 238 (not 235 as quoted) and b) with NJ sales tax the total is $258.77 - that gives me a pause as I really was planning for low $200s (before extra HBA)

 

[Techspin]

Noob question, apologies in advance- any way to make the ProLiant DL380e type servers... quiet? Noctua fans, etc? Was reading the idle power draw is was pretty darn low. Could you quiet it and work beside it? Or would it still sound like a blender?