Well, not really–while Robin is grossly oversimplifying things in saying iX are “simply using this issue to sell iX NAS Enclosures” (which they don’t sell anyway AFAIK; they sell complete servers), it certainly is something they’ve chosen to reserve for their hardware. Even if a straightforward, generalizable solution were found, I’d say the odds of iX accepting that PR would be zero. And if past experience is any indication, they’d probably close a thread here describing how to do it; they’ve done so with at least one other thread (I think from @NickF1227?) describing how to enable some “Enterprise” feature without the Enterprise license.
Of course, a sraightforward, generalizable solution is quite elusive. I have a solution (linked up-thread) that works for my hardware, and probably works on other Supermicro chassis with SAS controllers/backplanes. I’d say there’s a fair chance it would work on other manufacturers’ servers with SAS controllers/backplanes, but I don’t think I have had any feedback from anyone else who’s tried it.
Maybe it’s the case that a good general solution could be developed for the SAS controller/backplane arrangement, which could then cover many Supermicro/Dell/HPE/Lenovo servers. In theory, it seems you ought to be able to auto-discover the backplane layout in this way, and auto-populate it with the disks installed in each slot. From there, blinking a light (in the tool’s UI and/or on the physical machine) would be relatively trivial. But while this may be possible in theory, I haven’t seen that anyone’s done it yet, which indicates that the appropriate combination of skill and motivation is lacking.
What could be generalized to pretty much any hardware, though, would be a tool that works something like this:
- User draws drive layout as one or more grids of rows/columns to represent disk physical locations
- Via drag-and-drop or other pretty GUI means, user places disks in the appropriate slots
- Tool monitors disk status and shows appropriate blinkenlights
- (bonus feature, but would be nice) Tool handles disk replacements using the TrueNAS API, prompting user to place the replacement appropriately in the defined enclosure (otherwise, the user needs to update this tool any time a disk is changed, meaning its information will likely get outdated in a hurry).
- For even more bonus points, allow full storage management using this tool, again via the TrueNAS API. Adding vdevs (or removing if possible), expanding RAIDZ vdevs, creating new pools, etc., all could be done in this way.
I think I know enough about the relevant moving pieces to be confident that such a tool is possible, but I have nowhere near the skill to develop it.