Hard drive expansion

TrueNAS General
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what hard drive expansion cards will truenas scale support?

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Probably the same ones that the Ubuntu kernel (I believe this is the one that SCALE uses) supports. Be aware that what is supported and what is recommended are not the same thing though.

For the record, I’m using an old HPE H220 (SAS2308) and it’s rock solid.

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The recommended ones are LSI HBAs that can be flashed into IT mode

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SCALE is not based on Ubuntu - but both Ubuntu and SCALE are based on Debian Linux so in theory there is not much difference in HBA support between the two.

The only real difference is that with Ubuntu or even Debian you can add whatever packages you like, but I think that dpkg and apt/aptget are restricted in TrueNAS.

My advice is to try to find out what HBAs are officially supported by TrueNAS SCALE and buy one of those.

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The answer really hasn’t changed in 10 years or so, other than the name of the vendor:a LSI/Broadcom/Avago 2008/2308/3008 SAS HBA. They’re widely available and cheap. These days I’d look for a 3008.

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The suggested reading is What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller? | TrueNAS Community

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I don’t know if this has changed recently, but I think in the last release, it was indeed based on Ubuntu “kernel”. I did NOT say it was based on Ubuntu, there’s a difference. It’s Debian-based (ie. uses Debian repositories), but it was using Ubuntu kernel since it’s usually more recent and with more hardware support.

Seems like in the latest version it uses neither and rolls its own.
Debian runs 6.1.0.20, Ubuntu runs 6.5.0.18, while SCALE runs 6.1.74.

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And when it did change, it was to add the SAS3 generation to the list. Every time anyone has spent real effort testing new options, they leave dissatisfied.

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so any HBAs unraid? it has to be a non raid correct cause truenas dosent support raid cards if im understanding that right.

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If you mean that the recommendation is broadly similar to that of Unraid, I guess it is.

Hardware RAID controllers are completely inappropriate for use with ZFS and thus TrueNAS, yes.

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