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183601
Are Multiple Raid Sets Possible on Perc H200?
Hello,
I'm working on specing a PowerEdge T310 with the Perc H200 in it. Due to the cost of the drives what I'm thinking of doing is buying the server with the Perc H200 and 2 x 250 GB Sata drives in Raid 1.
Once I have it I would buy 2 2TB drives elsewhere and was hoping to connect those to the controller as well in their own Raid 1 set. Basically having the following hooked up through one Perc card:
1) 2 x 250 GB Raid 1 (For operating system)
2) 2 x 2 TB Raid 1 (data storage)
I'd be running the setup under Centos 64 bit if that makes any difference, ideally both would show up as a single 250GB and 2 TB disk.
If it's not possible, does anyone know of a card that could accomplish what I'm mentioning? Sales seemed to think it might be possible, but while I'm waiting for their email I thought I'd post here and get some feedback if I could.
Thanks in advance!
Jeffrey
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
1
January 5th, 2011 21:00
Per the online feature list for the H200, it can support 2 virtual disks. So running 2 raid 1's should work just fine.
JeffreyFive
4 Posts
0
February 5th, 2011 08:00
Thank you Dev Mgr.
I have the server installed and running with 2 x 250 GB drives and 2 x 2TB drives in their own raid 1 each and it is running great.
Thanks again!
George-M
3 Posts
0
March 6th, 2011 19:00
Jeffrey,
Did you have any problems formatting or initializing the 2TB array? I have read some posts that the PERC H200 controller is quite slow to initialize SATA disks. I am seriously considering purchase of a system like yours and adding my own drives to create a second mirrored array. Thanks.
GMileon
JeffreyFive
4 Posts
0
March 7th, 2011 16:00
Hello GMileon,
Initialization was very slow on the 2TB mirrored disks, but was successful. The times were as follows for initilization:
Virtual Disk 1: 250GB X 2 (Dell Sata Drives) - about 4 hours from the 50% mark, (they were half initialized when Dell got them to me.
Virtual Disk 2: 2TB X 2 (Western Digital "Green" Caviar Drives) - 1.5 weeks.
That is right, took 1.5 weeks for BGI to finish on these two giant drives. I talked to tech support about it and apparently this is normal for them to be slow with SATA drives.
I was worried that because they were slow to initialize that the server would perform poorly, but so far it has been fine, just a really long wait time for the disk to initialize. I'm pretty patient so waited, but I'm told there is a faster initialize method available but by time I figured it out I was at 60%.
It didn't bug me too much waiting as you can use the first array (which was OS partition, so by the time I got OS and all installed (Centos) on the 2x250 the new one was ready to be used. Formatting the 2TB took about 2 hours if I recall.
All in all, BGI seems to act like a low-level format so that might explain the time, and those disks are pretty huge. I'm pleased with the purchase/plan and would do so again.
Another benefit of the BGI was that I could check on the status without rebooting the machine and loading controller BIOS. So I would just run the following command to check on it (requires the dell openmanage items on server, not officially supported on Centos, but they seem to work fine).
Here's that command, if linux is your thing, along with the current output of how the drives appear:
[root@server ~]# omreport storage vdisk controller=0
List of Virtual Disks on Controller PERC H200 Adapter (Slot 1)
Controller PERC H200 Adapter (Slot 1)
ID : 0
Status : Ok
Name : Virtual Disk 0
State : Ready
Encrypted : Not Applicable
Layout : RAID-1
Size : 232.25 GB (249376538624 bytes)
Device Name : /dev/sda
Bus Protocol : SATA
Media : HDD
Read Policy : Not Applicable
Write Policy : Not Applicable
Cache Policy : Not Applicable
Stripe Element Size : 64 KB
Disk Cache Policy : Disabled
ID : 1
Status : Ok
Name : Virtual Disk 1
State : Ready
Encrypted : Not Applicable
Layout : RAID-1
Size : 1,862.50 GB (1999844147200 bytes)
Device Name : /dev/sdb
Bus Protocol : SATA
Media : HDD
Read Policy : Not Applicable
Write Policy : Not Applicable
Cache Policy : Not Applicable
Stripe Element Size : 64 KB
Disk Cache Policy : Disabled
Bottom line it works and I now have a nice mirrored home server for backup/storage of media. It's been rock-solid since I set it up a few months ago.
I'd be happy to run some performance tests if you still wonder about it, but if you are patient it can be a nice setup for home use. I was also told disks can be used during BGI, but not wanting to push it too hard I left it alone.
George-M
3 Posts
0
March 7th, 2011 18:00
Jeffrey,
Thanks for the quick response. You have been very helpful. I will need to reconfigure my purchase since this server has to be fully operational ASAP.
Best Wishes,
GMileon
JeffreyFive
4 Posts
0
March 8th, 2011 06:00
No problem, glad I could steer you away from having the same time lag issue. I believe the controller would likely perform best with the drives built for it. IE SAS drives from Dell. I would have gone 100% SAS with Dell, but the price point for server-grade drives was too much for me to justify for a simple home file server. At first I questioned why they cost so much more but it was explained to me that they are built to comply with the warranty, meaning that 24x7 heavy wear and tear won't destroy them as fast as my WD's probably will. Though that remains to be seen I expect I'll get a maybe 2 years out of them before they start needing replacement.
TownWebsites
1 Message
0
May 31st, 2011 18:00
I'm looking at current T310 and T410 and don't see any RAID controller specified with two RAID sets, the PERC 200 isn't listed. The 610 offers multiple raid sets from the configuration menu.
Am I reading this correctly for current products offered? And for a Raid 5 set , can I purchase something cheaper myself if I want to get a few 1 or 2tb drives and don't need the enterprise level performance?
theflash1932
7 Technologist
7 Technologist
•
16.3K Posts
0
May 31st, 2011 19:00
The H200 supports up to 2 Virtual Disks (arrays). It may not be offered as a configurable option on the sales website, but not all configuration options can be presented, as there are too many possibilities:
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
Many more VD's are available in other PERC options (64 for PERC 6 and H700).
Techpatriot
1 Message
0
July 5th, 2011 15:00
Hi, can you tell me what the faster initialization method was that you figured out?
George-M
3 Posts
0
July 5th, 2011 15:00
I don't know if I would consider my initialization "fast", but it definitely was faster than JeffreyFive's 1.5 weeks for a 2 TB array. I initialized a 500 GB array (465 GB virtual disk) in about 20 hours with the PERC 6i controller. The array has been working flawlessly for several months. I've had previous experience with this controller and it is solid. However, those previous experiences have been with SAS drives - which initialized MUCH faster. I've read technical explanations why SAS drives initialize faster, but that discussion escapes me now. Also, I used Western Digital enterprise class drives from New Egg to save some $$$. Dell uses the same WD drives but flashes them with their own firmware. This may positively affect initialization and integration with the controller. If you are in a rush to get the server online, want full support from Dell (they won't support drives purchased elsewhere), and want the best possible experience, I suggest you buy Dell verified SAS drives and one of their mid-to-high end array controllers. Best of luck to you.