PE2900: does Perc 5/i support RAID 5 with SATA disks?

Question

Reading the specs of the PE2900 system and of the Perc 5/i RAID controller I get mixed/unclear info about the support of SATA disks in RAID configuration (RAID 5 in my case). Does the integrated Perc 5/i controller support RAID using SATA disks? If confirmed, does the SATA disks mounted on the PE2900 are hotswappable, like it is for SAS disks? I understood the hot swappaple disks bay is a plus of the PE2900 in comparison with the cheaper PE1900.   Thanks in advance, Davide Bedin

warwizard55 · Answer

Hi,     Yes the PE2900 may be purchased with the perc5i controller controlling either SAS OR SATA (cannot have both SAS and SATA)     If you go to WWW.dell.com, you can configure a PE2900 right on the site,.The SAS/SATu drives are hot swappable, I've been unable to determine for sure if the optional SATA drives are hot swap capable.   warwizard

DELL-Siobhan K · Answer

DavideB,   The PE2900 with Integrated Perc 5/i supports hot-plug SATA disks in a RAID 5 configuration.    The PE1900 does not support hot-plug capabilities.

fbuono · Answer

Hi All, FYI, with my PE2900 I use both SAS and SATA drives: PERC 5/i 2x146Go 10k SAS Maxtor in RAID0 4x500Go SATA2 Hitachi (model E7K500) in RAID5 Everything is working great!!!

DELL-GaryS · Answer

The two RAID 0 drives are in the optional media bay, right? in that case you could do it, I suspect you have two controllers, one being the SAS/SATu non RAID controller, and the other being the PERC 5/i.

fbuono · Answer

Sorry to say no. In fact, I have the media bay and it's plugged but there is no drive insert for now.   I have only one controller, the PERC 5/i, and all my drives are connected to this one. My SATA drives are directly connected to the backplane like SAS drives as following: - 0 is Maxtor SAS 146Go - 1 is Maxtor SAS 146Go - 2 is free (will receive a third Maxtor SAS 146Go to do a RAID5 with the 2 others) - 3 is Hitachi SATA2 500Go - 4 is Hitachi SATA2 500Go - 5 is Hitachi SATA2 500Go - 6 is free - 7 is free - 8 is free - 9 is free (will receive a Hitachi SATA2 500Go as spare disk for the Hitachi's RAID5)

fbuono · Answer

:smileysad: That's a bad news... Thanks

DELL-GaryS · Answer

After doing some research, I've discovered that Dell no longer offers PE2900's with your configuration, we ran into a problem with assigning hot spares, we could end up trying to use a SATA drive to rebuild an array populated with SAS drives. Apparently, that's a bad thing due to the differences in the interface speeds of the two drive types.

You may want to reconsider putting the SATA spare in slot 9, all my documentation tells me that the flex bay is restricted to SAS drives only.

Today, trying to customize a PE2900 online with your configuration produces the error:

Errors:

The Hard Drives you selected must be either all SAS or all SATA. Mixing of SAS and SATA Hard Drives is not allowed. Please update your selections in one or more of the following: Primary Hard Drive, 2nd Hard Drive, 3rd Hard Drive, 4th Hard Drive, 5th Hard Drive, 6th Hard Drive, 7th Hard Drive and/or 8th Hard Drive.

If I try to configure with the Flex Bay included and put any SATA drive in the system I get:

Errors:

The Hard Drive Configuration require all SAS hard drives from both Backplane Hard Drive and Flex Bay Hard Drive .

So although you CAN mix SAS and SATA drives, you have to make sure that you will not have a configuration that will attempt to use a SATA drive to rebuild an array containing SAS drives. (the reverse is also true but as the largest SAS drive offered is smaller than the smallest SATA offered on this system, it's unlikely that you'll ever use a SAS drive to rebuild a SATA based array,)

Message Edited by DELL-GaryS on 11-13-200610:25 AM

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

PE2900: does Perc 5/i support RAID 5 with SATA disks?

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