R230 poweredge disks...

Question

Recently we purchased 3 Dell servers:   DELL Power-edge R230 Xeon E3-1230 v6 4C 1x16GB H330 2x1TB SATA + 2x120GB SSD DVDROM 250W 3yr NBD + Rails   from our local official Dell distributor, and we noticed that the spare disk's that came with servers, that we also ordered, were Toshiba DT01ACA regular sata HDD drive, and Western Digital SSD, with no indication what so ever that they were manufactured for Dell or by Dell.   So my question is this common practice or serious breach of protocol.   When we contacted local distributor, they replied, that this is normal thing, an those are Dell OEM parts. Furthermore that they came from Optiplex workstations, and Dell NB, and transferred by need, if the server need to be less expensive, or not specified exactly that you need server grade SSD and 10k, 15K, SAS disks.   In addition those are entry level disks, and supported by R230 specification, as they mentioned.   Their conclusion is that they have legitimate right to do that, and DELL is aware and condole this.

Kuato1981 · Accepted Answer

Ok, i've got confirmation that disk are indeed with that part number, so thats a relief.

We also replaced WD green SSD disks with better drives, samsung -

Dell Part A8173673

they are not server graded and don't hold data in cache in case of power faliure, but they have near bottom line spec, as alternative and 5 year warranty.

In addition it's not demanding aplication, and we have cluster with 3 servers an RAID's with APC UPS, so we got it all covered.

Thanks for all your help.

Daniel My · Answer

Hello Please send a private message with your service tag to ensure we have all appropriate information on your system. Thanks

Kuato1981 · Answer

I will get back to you on that...

SamirD · Answer

Generally all Dell parts except for those which I see in their consumer lines have Dell part numbers on them.

As far as the type of drive, if you didn't specify SAS 10k or 15k, you'll get what's known as 'nearline' drives, aka 7200-class drives. I am surprised however that they are not SAS drives nor have any Dell markings on them.

Kuato1981 · Answer

Look here this is consumer SSD it also has part number...for example

Dell Part A8173673

I confirmed with other coleague that they had similiar expirience...

...and that Toshiba manufactures 7200RPM disks for Dell servers and it's the same line as DT01ACA.

Kuato1981 · Answer

Did yo get my sevrvice tag, so that you may confirm that servers came with Toshiba HDD (nearline drives).

As i recall bios server stated that drives are not certified - ergo they dont have dell firmware, speaking for toshiba disks.

SSD disks they put afterwards, for those i now that they are not certified.

Daniel My · Answer

Resellers are not Dell employees. We have no control over how they run their business. There are resellers who are partners. Partners or certified resellers may have contractual obligations with us.

Regarding the drives, we do not validate non-Dell drives on our servers. The drives we sell and validate for our servers use Dell firmware. If you use the same model drive that is running non-Dell firmware it is not validated or supported. It may work without issue, in a degraded capacity, or not function at all. Most of our controllers will flag non-certified/non-Dell drives and report a warning status on the drive so that it is obvious to any tech an unsupported drive is being used.

Thanks

Daniel My · Answer

Yes and thank you for providing the service tag.

I show the system was sold with drive CW76M. That drive matches the Toshiba model that you provided. I show that the drive has Dell custom firmware installed at the factory, and it should be flagged as a Dell certified drive. Normal Toshiba firmware should not install on the drive without doing some type of force-flash. I suggest not installing normal Toshiba firmware onto the drive. If you do that the drive would become unsupported.

Thanks

PowerEdge Hardware General

R230 poweredge disks...

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