So, I've got TrueNAS fine with 8x SAS drives in a Fractal Design 804 with a 9211-8i HBA and another TrueNAS with a bunch of spare stuff and 2008 HBA doing backups with 4x SAS drives.

12x SAS drives in total over two machines, both have additional SSD doing booting. No problems.

However, I've never dabbled in Enterprise and have just been given a HP DL380e - 12x 3.5" bays at the front, 2x 3.5" bays at the front.

Thing has been wiped, BIOS reset to defaults and comes with a bunch of spinners but wondering what the possibility is of getting two SSD's in the backplane and my own 12x SAS drives up front?

Already surprised to see that there is talk of license keys in the BIOS - of which I have nothing, puchased a iLO key to see if I can atleast get somewhere with that and will start off with trying to put TrueNAS on the SSD and get it to boot and then move onto see what state the front drive plane is in.

So far random Googling has not left me optimistic about the whole thing with talk of the P420 controller, B320i controller, HPE Smart Array SAS License Key to support SAS drives, supported drives, supported memory... being used to Desktop stuff figured I'd just have to get the HBA in IT mode and off I'd go.

Power hungry and loud is already a known factor - so outside of that any good places to start or anything encouraging?