Is it possible to transplant my exsiting ZFS array into a NetApp disk shelf?

I currently have a Ryzen 1600 desktop with an LSI SAS9211-8I slapped in it. I currently have 8 4TB drives striped together in raidz2. It’s basically my old PC with a sprinkle of enterprise gear and ECC memory. The main problem I have with it is that it’s not possible to rackmount and there’s zero room for expansion. Although it is nice to make use of my own old harware.

A NetApp disk shelf and either a new rackmount server (or a rackmount case for my existing gear) would seem to suit me better, basically like what Wendell showed in the “172tb video”.

Is there anything stopping me from just running “zpool export”, then transplanting it into the NetApp shelf and running “zpool import”? I’m not actually sure how the individual disks would be represented in Linux? Is it just the usual /dev/sdX?

Obviously I’ll need something to interact with the disk shelf as well. It sounds like I need a different HBA with an external SAS port?

Forgive me, I don’t get to even look at actual hardware anymore at work thanks to remote hosting :frowning:.

Yes so long as you get an HBA with external ports and the right disk shelf. The shelf just acts as a pass through with redundancy.

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The IOM3 and IOM6 controllers on the Netapp disk shelves pretty much just act as a SAS expander. If you use a controller (I prefer LSI) flashed in I.T. mode your server won’t see all that stuff in between. It will see the drives as being directly attached.

Just FYI if you didn’t already know. The IOM3 and IOM6 controllers use a qsfp cable not an sff-8088. So you will either need a Netapp card with qsfp cable or a qsfp to sff-8088 cable to plug into an LSI card (I run the latter)

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Thank you for that bit at the end. Those sort of details is what the L1T was severely lacking.

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Yeah that one bit me on my first NetApp shelf, I should have mentioned it! I got mine from 10gTek and they worked just fine.

One other nice thing is with dual controllers like most NetApp shelves have you can either connect up to 4 Nodes, or you can do HA with one cable in each controller connected back to a 2 port HBA.

Also, tbh you may not even need to export your ZFS array as they will show up in the HBA as though they are internal to the system. Still should to be safe, but if you like to live dangerously go for it :stuck_out_tongue:

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I would definitely export it…also not a bad idea to back everything up before exporting. Anytime hardware between disks change, it is always a good idea IMO. You never know what weird things hardware will do. Before you know it, your storage pool becomes unrecoverable without a pro getting involved. :frowning_face:

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