Dell branded storage controller for ZFS file-server | Advice requested

[Ahmed Kamal]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to build a ZFS file-server, unfortunately I'm locked into Dell
branded hardware only. I know Dell sometimes ships LSI branded cards, but
that too probably won't work for me, as I live outside the US and the local
Dell rep is clueless (so whatever I want to buy, has to be on Dell's
website). I am considering Dell R720xd or R730xd. I will use Intel i350
NICs, and ECC RAM, but the biggest questions are around the SAS HBA

Per my research, I have the following notes and questions. Appreciating
your comments on them

* H310 Card supports syspd (jbod) mode per
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=254906 so it is
probably the best card for what I want to do, right?

* H310 is a low end card, it has very limited queue depth (25 I believe) ..
Is this actually a problem when using the disks (20 x SAS 10k disks) in
syspd/jbod mode? what about if I attach a couple of SSD disks?

* H310 can be flashed to IT mode (LSI firmware), and is supported by
Illumos kernel (if I'll ever need that) .. so overall it looks like a good
option. Any "watch-outs" I should be aware of ?

* H710/p have no way of exposing JBOD/syspd in any way .. If using those
cards, the best I can do, is to create a raid-0 per disk, and put zfs on
top of that. How bad is this? Is the only problem that I'm locked into H710
firmware? Would the nvram and bbu on H710 improve performance significantly
vs H310?

* H330 and H730, seem supported by mrsas driver. Is this driver able to
expose jbod/syspd mode? If yes, what's the overall advise, should I go with
one of those, or the "trusty" H310 ?

Your help and advice is most appreciated