From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jun 22 14:30:31 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 50A85CF1 for ; Sat, 22 Jun 2013 14:30:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@growveg.net) Received: from smtp1.servage.net (smtp1.servage.net [IPv6:2a01:3b0:1:fb:1::2001]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1315B1FA9 for ; Sat, 22 Jun 2013 14:30:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: from potato.growveg.org (growveg-1-pt.tunnel.tserv11.ams1.ipv6.he.net [IPv6:2001:470:1f14:3d2::2]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp1.servage.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 578EE3288C for ; Sat, 22 Jun 2013 14:32:42 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <51C5B4EE.3010601@growveg.net> Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 15:30:06 +0100 From: John User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130607 Thunderbird/17.0.6 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Dell R710 with PERC H310. GPT issues and hardware raid or ZFS? X-Enigmail-Version: 1.5.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 14:30:31 -0000 Hello list, I have a Dell R710 with PERC H310 using hardware raid5 with 4x3TB disks. I tried installing FreeBSD-10 and it defaulted to a GPT partitioning scheme. FreeBSD installed OK but, on reboot, it couldn't find the kernel. I grabbed freebsd-9.1 and it offered me the choice of partitioning schemes. I had to change the partitioning scheme to "BSD partition" I think it's called, in order to get a bootable install. The problem with this is that this particular schema can only see about 1TB of space yet there's about 10TB there. Currently, writes are cached on the hardware raid. (Need to tune it up because I left all settings at their default in the configuration utility. If it does a lot of writes, it will stall as the buffer fills.) I'm happy to let freebsd have this 1TB to itself if I can somehow get it to seethe other 9TB. The purpose of the server is to run virtual boxes. Hard drive array is seen like this: mfi0: port 0xfc00-0xfcff mem 0xddffc000-0xddffffff,0xddf80000-0xddfbffff irq 42 at device 0.0 on pci2 mfi0: Using MSI mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23 My questions are: 0. which is better? ZFS or hardware raid+UFS2? 1. should I use ZFS on top of the raid5? Guessing not. 2. should I blat the system and change the raid so it's a JBOD, then make it do zfs? 3. what other methods can I use to make the existing install see the rest of the space? 4. how come it could not read the kernel when the partitioning scheme was GPT?Is it because it was raid5 in hardware? thanks!