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PowerEdge R730XD - extra RAID controller
Hello,
Hope someone can help me! We have just purchased 4 x R730xd servers for use with Storage Spaces Direct. The Dell Enterprise Product specialist specified a HBA330 storage controller as a normal RAID controller wouldn't be suitable for Storage Spaces Direct. We have fully populated the 12 x 3.5" front bays, the 4 x 3.5" internal bays and the rear 2.5" bays.
Our vision was to use the 2 rear drives (2 x 300GB 10K SAS) for the OS, however ideally I would have liked to make this a hardware RAID 1, so a drive failure doesn't require an OS re-install (and it's easy for our on-site techs to just replace the drives). The Dell specialist said specifying two controllers was not possible, however I don't understand why not.
My question is, am I able to add another RAID controller and connect this to the rear backplane? I am able to do this to a certain extent, but when my second controller is connected, the status lights indicate an error and the following error is displayed on startup:
iDRAC Settings:
CBL0009: Backplane 0 connector A0 is not connected.
CBL0009: Backplane 1 connector A2 is not connected.
This is because (I think) the white signal cable is still connected to the system board from the rear backplane, as this appears to be required for the 2.5" drives to power up with the system. I have moved the SAS connector from the front backplane to the 2nd RAID controller and I can see the drives as well as set up the RAID array, just with the errors above and the diagnostic display always showing an error on the front of the server (which is what I would like to stop!). The 2nd RAID controller I have added is a Dell PERC H200.
Does anyone have any ideas? My ideas are...:
Can I reconfigure the front backplane/System board to not expect the rear backplane to be connected?
Will a newer RAID controller be properly recognised by the BIOS and therefore recognise that the backplane is plugged in elsewhere?
Any help would be gratefully received!
Thanks,
Tom.
DELL-Daniel My
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November 6th, 2016 17:00
Hello
The R730XD does support dual controllers. Dual controllers are not supported in your specific configuration. Dual controllers are only supported on flex-zoning backplanes on the R730XD.
No.
No.
You ordered the wrong server for what you are wanting. Rather than try to get this server to do something it was not designed to do I would look into buying a server that does what you want.
If you ever get it to work it will not be running a supported configuration. If you contact support with any issues with the configuration they will not likely be able to assist.
Thanks
dailytech
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March 10th, 2020 04:00
https://downloads.dell.com/solutions/general-solution-resources/White%20Papers/DellEMCMicrosoft_StorageSpacesDirect_ReadyNode_DG.pdf
States
Storage Adapter ~ HBA 330
Additional Storage Adapter ~ H330
Boot device ~ 2.5inch SSD in FlexBay
please confirm which is wrong.
TJ Zimmerman
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April 20th, 2020 11:00
@dailytech @DELL-Daniel My
To add to this beyond OP's use case, I think people are ALSO landing here searching for how to use two separate controllers to manage disks in the 12x3.5" backplane present in the front of the Chassis. At least I was because I can't find this information anywhere. But there's some discussion about it with people claiming both sides are true.
I think most are aware that a separate flexbay option exists that adds support for 2 additional 2.5" drives in the back of the chassis. People may or may not be aware that this is managed by a separate H330 controller. And when you say that multiple storage controllers can be used in the R730xd, they are confused because they assume it is possible to use them both to manage the disks in the primary storage backplane via a new card installed in a PCI-E slot and connected to the primary Backplane.
So, to my understanding, it is NOT possible to have two separate storage controllers in the R730xd managing separate disks collocated the 12x3.5" backplane