New install on Dell R430

TrueNAS General
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Hi guys,

First time installing TrueNAS on top of Proxmox, and looking for some advice on planning the drives.

I’ve found a lot of good answers discussing parts of this question in different scenarios, but I haven’t found this exact question. That may be because it’s just not possible, but figured I’d ask…

I’m using an old Dell R430 with a RAID controller. My guess is that, even if set to HBA, there’s no way to pass through some drives - it’s all or nothing for anything physically connected to the backplane, correct?

This seems like a use case that wouldn’t be that uncommon - anyone have any suggestions for running four drives through the RAID controller (set to HBA to be passed through to TrueNAS) and the other four (mirrored PVE and mirrored VM drives) setup some other way? I’ve thought about running an expansion card for 2 NVMe cards in the back anyway (for faster VM’s), so even a way to get two of those drives to bypass the backplane…

Thanks!

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In Fangtooth, you can get VMs and LXC and Docker… so simplicity is on the horizon.

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Well, not the answer I was hoping for, but better than “you’re out of luck”!

Anyone else have a magic R430 solution?

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I believe the R430 has an onboard SATA (S120) that you could use with a SAS breakout cable ( SFF-8087 to 4x Sata) to connect to a PCIe board with 2 x m.2 SATA.

A board like this > StarTech.com 3-port M.2 SSD (NGFF) Adapter Card - Supports 1x PCIe (NVMe) M.2 SSD, 2x SATA III M.2 SSDs - PCIe 3.0 Adapter (PEXM2SAT32N1) : Startech: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
A cable like this > 10Gtek® SFF-8087 to 4x Sata 1-Meter(3.3-ft), 6G Internal Mini SAS to SATA Cable, 36pin (SFF-8087) Male (Host) to 4x SATA (Target) 7pin Female Fan-out Cable : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

You may need to enable the S120 on your BIOS.

Because you are using Dell’s onboard SATA controller, you’ll be able to boot Proxmox from the 2 x m.2 SATA whilst passing the RAID controller to the TrueNAS VM.

Just be cautious with temperatures. 2 x m.2 on a 1U unit can get toasty. :slight_smile:

If you decide to use a different PCIe board with 2 x NVMe instead just bear in mind that Dell’s x30 series can’t (easily) boot from NVMe drives.

1 Like
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That’s exactly what I’m looking for! You, good sir, have given me hope…

In fact, as I fumble through here, it seems that I have more options (tried to post pics, but that was a no-go…)

Which consists of a single SATA port not in use (although it’s labeled as HDD 8, so not sure how that’s possible when all 8 go through the RAID card…):

And two 8087 ports!

Now the question is… how do I power those suckers??

I’ve found other projects where the power for the DVD drive was siphoned off and split… But that seem like it wouldn’t’ be enough for 4 drives? Can I use the existing power for the drives in the hot swap bays with little extensions?

More to follow, but you’ve certainly pointed things in the right direction!!

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I should probably give examples of what I’m thinking:

Either this for power, running inside the hot swap bays (which, I guess, would no longer be hot swap):

Plus this, running from one of those 8087 ports:

Or, alternatively, for power, try to unplug the DVD drive and use this:

With this (and maybe those extensions…)