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H730P with more than 8 drives
We have a range of R730xd servers with 2 x H730P RAID controllers, each with 8 x 6gbps SSDs attached. The servers are sold as "12+12" drive servers, and the chassis has bays for 4 more drives per controller.
When I read the H730P spec, I see it is described as an 8-port controller, which triggers some questions.
1) Are all 12 drive bays in each 'section' usable? I'd assume so since the server is sold as "12+12".
2) Are all 12 bays per controller handled by the H730P, or are 4 of them attached to ports on the motherboard? If so, which of them, and are they feature limited (caching, RAID support, performance, ...)?
Best regards,
Brian
DELL-Daniel My
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June 23rd, 2016 14:00
Yes, all 12 drives can operate at 6Gb/s. If you wanted to get the full 12Gb/s out of SAS drives then you would populate a maximum of 8.
Yes, the 8 ports utilize a form of port sharing. If you populate more than 8 drives then the 8 ports can split. You can populate up to 16 drives per controller to attain 6Gb/s. If you populate more than 16 they will operate at 3Gb/s. Each port can support up to 4 devices.
Thanks
pcore
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June 23rd, 2016 13:00
Hi Daniel,
the drives are SATA SSDs, and there are 2 x 4 empty slots on the front. The servers are not configured with the option of 2 drives on the back.
The H730P spec says "8-port internal SATA+SAS solution supporting 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s SATA. 3Gb/s, 6Gb/s and 12Gb/s SAS hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)".
Can all 12 drives then operate at full 6 gbps? I thought 1 drive would use 1 port, or does it utilize port sharing somehow? If so, will the 8 drives operate at full 6gbps no matter which bays I use or do I have to take that into account?
Thanks for any clarification.
Brian
DELL-Daniel My
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June 23rd, 2016 13:00
Hello
The H730 supports up to 32 physical disks. You can find out more information about the PERCs on dell.com/perc
All bays on the backplane should be usable. There are a lot of different backplane configurations on the H730. Any slots on the backplane should be available for use when attached to an H730 controller.
If the bays are on the backplane then they are handled by the controller. The R730 has backplane options that include +2 configurations for internal drive bays. Those drives may be handled by a separate controller, but any bays on the actual backplane will be routed to the controller connected to the backplane.
I didn't review every possible backplane option on the R730, but if the backplane has slots that are capable of supporting PCIe drives then those drives will bypass the H730 and go through the PCIe drive controller. They will be presented to the operating system as JBOD/non-RAID. If those slots are populated with normal drives then they will be routed to the H730 like the rest of the drives on the backplane.
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pcore
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June 23rd, 2016 15:00
Thank you very much, Daniel!