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PE R415 eliminate software RAID controller
Hi,
I have a Dell PowerEdge R415 that has a backplane for 4 hot swappable drives and uses the PERC S300 Software RAID controller.
I want to install ESXi 6.0 but it wont recognize the local drives. VMWare KB 2007900 explains that ESXi 6 does not support the software RAID controllers such as the S300 (nor does Windows Server 2012 for that matter).
The proposed workaround is to use the build in SATA controller instead of the S300.
Is there a cable that will go from the hard drive backplane out to 4 separate SATA connectors that will allow me to do this?
DELL-Daniel My
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June 29th, 2017 12:00
Hello
The part number for the cabled SATA configuration from the system board is P459G. Switching between backplane and cabled drive configurations is not supported. I'm not sure where you will place the drives. You may be able to remove the backplane and continue using the carriers. I'm not sure if it will produce an error with the backplane removed.
Thanks
macory
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June 29th, 2017 13:00
Thank you Daniel.
I did not understand that the option to use the built in SATA controller was designed for cabled drives and not the hot swappable drive backplane. I got this idea from an article about the issue that the software RAID controllers are not supported for use with ESXi
Sounds like what I need to do is get a hardware RAID controller to replace my PERC S300.
Once again I need help to determine which hardware RAID controller can be installed in my Dell Power Edge R415 ( I know they come in different form factors ) and what is the correct cable to connect it to my hard drive backplane?
DELL-Daniel My
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June 29th, 2017 13:00
The R415 supports the adapter version of the H700 and H200 controllers. It supports the modular version of the S300 and SAS6/iR.
The modular controllers go into the integrated storage slot and the cable connects to the SAS connector on the riser. The adapter controllers go into a normal PCIe slot and the cables connect directly to the controller cards. The SAS 6/iR should use the same cable your S300 is using. The H200/H700 use cable part number N262J.
www.dell.com/learn/shared-content~data-sheets~en/documents~r415-specsheet.pdf
Thanks