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flametoast
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June 27th, 2025 07:17
ME5024 With JBOD
I have two PowerEdge R660 servers connected over scsi to our ME5024 through HBA355e adapters. The ME has 13x 1.9T SSD drives that I want to expose as JBOD for ZFS. The onboarding wizard offers nothing of the sort. I've read about defining each drive as a RAID0 and going from there, and I've read how that will degrade performance, if it works at all. Is there a path through unboxing to the scheme outlined above? I mean, what's the HBA card's purpose if not for this?
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Posted June 29th, 2025 07:58
Your HBA is needed to expand your SAS bus to connect a external "box". But as already says the ME5 is a "full blown" SAN. For your needs the MD2424, 2412 or 2460 should the right ones, which looking similar but they are simple JBODs with no internal RAID or other magic.
When hooked up behind a non RAID HBA your OS will see single Disks. If you use a RAID HBA like H965e than old school RAIDgroups can be created.
Regards,
Joerg
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Posted June 27th, 2025 13:27
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Posted July 11th, 2025 06:51
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Posted July 11th, 2025 08:11
Hello,
yes you can perform a direct attach with12Gb HD Mini-SAS (SFF-8644) cables
Also HBA355e has four SAS ports grouped as P0+P1 and P2+P3. These must be cabled in order to avoid degraded port warnings
DELL- Marco B
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Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services
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Posted July 11th, 2025 08:22
I am immensely grateful and very relieved. Thank you for your invaluable time
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Posted July 11th, 2025 10:40
Hello @DELL-Marco B
"...Also HBA355e has four SAS ports grouped as P0+P1 and P2+P3. These must be cabled in order to avoid degraded port warnings"...
Thats funny because IIRC there is a Bestpractive Paper which shows that have to use P0 and P2. I expect to avoid some kind of bottleneck or a full queues.
Because i found this paper very late i can say we have use P0 and P1 in all of our ME4/5 deployments and it just works.
Regards,
Joerg
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Posted July 11th, 2025 12:22
Hello thanks for the feedback, here some a about ports
DELL- Marco B
Social Media and Communities Professional
Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services
#IWork4Dell
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Posted July 11th, 2025 12:34
Yes... thats the one. But why do you say use Port 0+1 and the KB says DONT DO IT?
DELL-Marco B
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Posted June 27th, 2025 13:05
Hello,
The ME5024 does not support direct JBOD mode. It is a fully featured SAN storage array designed to manage disks via its own RAID controller and firmware.
However, you can expand its capacity using Dell-qualified expansion enclosures such as the ME412, ME424, or ME484, which connect via SAS and are managed through the ME5024 controllers.
If you're looking for true JBOD functionality consider Dell's MD Series JBOD enclosures instead.
DELL- Marco B
Social Media and Communities Professional
Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services
#IWork4Dell
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