Support multi-actuator SAS devices. (E.g. Segate Mach.2)

Feature Requests
1

Problem/Justification
Elements of the TrueNAS GUI do not work properly (or they work incosistently) when a system has multiple devices attached with the same serial number.
Although multi-actuator SAS drives present each actuator as a unique LUN, they share the physical drive serial number.

[NAS-126776] GUI Interaction with Seagate SAS Mach.2 Drives - iXsystems TrueNAS Jira

Impact
Undesirable user experience and potential for additional impact. (Broken alerts?)

User Story
Storage device identity should be enhanced by concatenating serial number and LUN.

2 Likes
2

Sticking some tech blogger/media posts around this topic here

3

I would also love this feature. I’m running in to a wall trying to get these drives configured correctly in the CLI.

1 Like
4

This really needs improvement. These drives are rare for now, but we will undoubtedly see more come into the market. It’s (almost) trivial to set up a pool and VDEVs with these using the CLI, but the web interface only sees the top half of the drives. This has implications for reporting, monitoring, management, and drive replacement.

Instead of displaying by serial number or /dev/sdx, why not by SCSI ID?

1 Like
5

See Level1Techs forum for a good script to get a pool set up.

6

You mean the linked thread above?
Yes, it’s a good resource.

7

Gemini was actually what resolved my questions for my particular setup.

8

What I dislike is the marketing. The Seagate Exos drives are marketed as 2X18TB for example. My math must be off, 2 * 18TB = 36TB to me. They are doing that marketing crap again. Shrinkflation. Just sayin’

I know that my homelab would never be able to take advantage of this kind of product, but someone’s lab will enjoy it.

2 Likes
9

Allow me to doubt the “undoubtly”. These are specialised drives targeted at data centre customers, and used with specialised software stacks. This kind of product may have a future in the data centre. Or it may not. Either way, it is unlikely to trickle down to customer market.

It would be nice to be able to use a batch of refurbished 2X drives, offloaded at vile price by a data centre. But is the pain worth the gain?

2 Likes
10

My 6 bay Node 304 would like dual actuator drives.

I considered them, but at the end of the day they were unobtanium for me.

So 6x 22TB it was… 24TB had a literal “large” price premium.

11

I blurted out a laugh, you got me.

1 Like
12

this is a problem well beyond these drives and honestly IX should make it more tolerant of “duplicate serials”… for example it also happens:

when you inadvertently form a multi-path config, this one is rather confusing to me… isn’t this an enterprise feature? why is it so broken on community as to freak out the GUI? it doesn’t even throw an alert which will cause frustration to anyone who’s ran into this.

with USB enclosures that mask or present fake serials for various silly reasons. once again disks to not show in the GUI due to “duplicates”. usually when discussed here these devices usually get shot down with hate but plenty are reliable and workable for moderate use where performance matters less, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have one as a backup target, etc.

I should note that, it’s a TrueNAS middleware problem only, the ZFS machinery only cares about partuuid and reboots, imports and exports work without trouble.