New Server - LSI Card

[NervousPanda]

Hi All,

I was recently able to get my hands on a i5 7600 with 8GB of RAM and a small 256GB SSD in it.

After some thinking, I decided to follow the advice given by a few of you during my trouble times (see Zpool CHKSUM - Help needed ) and upgrade my server so I can finally have an LSI card.

So, my current server is as follows:

CPU: Intel J5005

RAM: 16GB DDR4

Pools: 2x 500GB SSD in Mirror, 5x 4TB in Raidz2 connected to a SATA Controller card. All SATA

I’ve a few doubts before migrating from one to the other and I hope to get some much needed help.

Whilst I’m trying to convince the gods that I’m worthy of cheap memory, which LSI card should I buy and how to know if they’re original or fake? (is that a thing? I think I read it somewhere in the past that there are fake ones).

Migration wise, should I just save all my config from existing NAS and then import it in the newer one, shutdown the old machine and boot the new one with the disks connected?

Many thanks !

[SmallBarky]

I think a lot of this is covered in the Resources section articles. The one item I bring up with these HBA cards is having excellent cooling flow over them. Manufacturer docs say 150-200 linear feet per minute over the heatsinks. Some users add fans blowing over them. These are designed for server use.

Resources List including Detailed Hardware and System Build Notes (plus new user advice / help)

Resources List including Detailed Hardware and System Build Notes (plus new user advice / help)

This resource was originally created by user: [WI_Hedgehog] (https://www.truenas.com/community/members/wi_hedgehog.116993/) on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. [CISCO Datacenter.jpg] TrueNAS is not as simple as videos make it look, though it is fairly easy to get a system running if you read the documentation and don’t color outside the lines. Show : tl;dr: Hacking TrueNAS If you want to save yourself lots of money and loads …

[Fleshmauler]

@NervousPanda

Whilst I’m trying to convince the gods that I’m worthy of cheap memory, which LSI card should I buy and how to know if they’re original or fake? (is that a thing? I think I read it somewhere in the past that there are fake ones).

Not in any way sponsored or affiliated; in case you’re worried about fakes here is a well respected seller with good support:

The Art of Server

the Art of Server | eBay Stores

Reach out & maybe even get a recommendation before buying.

@NervousPanda

should I just save all my config from existing NAS

Always a good idea, even if you’re not transferring hardware around. I’ve done a lot of stupid things & had to do clean installs quite a bit; having the config backed up is a life saver.

@NervousPanda

boot the new one with the disks connected

Basically yeah - as long as there was nothing too sketchy with how your previous sata controller presented the disks to TrueNAS, it should just magically work.

Edit: as Barky mentioned, do try to slap a fan ontop of whatever HBA you end up getting.

[NervousPanda]

First of all, thank you very much for the replies

I ended up doing a lot of reading and settled.

Was able to do a smooth transition between hardware with almost zero hiccups. I did a 2-step migration where I first migrated to a new MB+CPU+RAM, tested everything and then upgraded the drives to an HBA card.

Pretty solid performance, zero stability issues, only had to configure the new network interface as expected. My only current issue was when I tried to upgrade to 25.10.1 I had a kernel panic at start. After some reading, seems to be related with BIOS settings which I need to explore (in fairness, 25.10.0 also throws the error from time to time when booting up).

For future readers: don’t be afraid of upgrading your hardware