So I have a Dell PowerEdge R740XD with 16x 4Tb HDDs, I want to use ESXi as a hypervisor and then create a VM of TrueNAS for ZFS pooling and providing SMB iSCSI storage.

My initial plan was to RAID6 the 16 drives, with 2 drive redundancy, and just work off that, however after having to troubleshoot an issue with the array (I think I have a bad drive), I've had time to consider options that may or may not be better.

My server has a PERC H730P in RAID mode, and I heard it may be possible to have a RAID and then allow non-raid drives through ESXi to a VM. (Is that actually possible; has anyone done this?)

One configuration I considered was a RAID10 (2 2) for VM storage, and then take the remaining 12 disks and direct them through ESXi to TrueNAS to make into a ZFS pool (unsure of what configurations are available yet, but I intend to focus on redundancy without wasting too much space).

• Does anyone have any suggestions regarding which design would be better?
• Is it possible to have both a RAID10 and pass-through the non-RAID drives in ESXi? (Don't have my IDSDM setup yet, so don't have ESXi up yet to confirm.)
• If my initial plan was a RAID6, what would be a good ZFS equivalent that would be fast but redundant to at least two drives?
• Have I missed anything or is there any other suggestions/notes that might be worth sharing?I'm semi-new to servers, only having ran an R710 with RAID5, so I've very well might missed something that might just be a better plan of action.

Thanks so much for any and all help!

EDIT/UPDATE:

After some discussion with a couple people and a bit of thought, I'm highly considering the option of putting ESXi on the IDSDM, making the TrueNAS VM and storing it on the same IDSDM, then providing direct access to all the drives to the NAS, finally use an iSCSI storage from TrueNAS to provide ESXi with a storage pool for other VMs.

See diagram:

https://preview.redd.it/cjrzlki44uca1.png?width=622&format=png&auto=webp&s=d179f4e8146694db9a3cbfae186b992bc07c14df