PowerEdge T310 abondoning Perc H200 controller

Hello

Please send a private message with your service tag to ensure we have all appropriate information on your system.

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Thank you for the service tag.

No, it would not be a straightforward process. Changing between a hardware and chipset controller are not supported. Also, changing the backplane or switching between a backplane and cabled drive configuration are not supported.

You can probably do it. You would need a different cable to connect to cabled drives that provides power. You would also want a drive cage to put the drive in; Otherwise they will just be laying on top of other components in the system. The cage is likely a chassis part, you might be able to find one for sale from someone piecing out a system.

When the drives are cabled to the system board you can enable and disable the embedded S100 RAID controller with the BIOS SATA setting. If you set it to RAID it will enable the S100 RAID controller. Any setting aside from RAID will cause the controller to operate like a normal pass-through SATA controller.

Thanks

I just sent the private message (I hope).

Thank you for the prompt and detailed response!

I can see the issues you mention.  I do understand that changes of this magnitude are not supported. So I really appreciate your response.  

Our system is old enough that spending the time and money to find and do direct replacements for the hardware is probably not optimal (it steals money from the eventual replacement).

I see a couple of minor concerns and one major concern. 

There is only 1 SATA power cable available. It  powers the CD drive and the hard drive back plane.  So although I could put in a splitter to power 2 drives that does concern me (I prefer to power as few devices as possible from individual run). Though it did originally power two drives (via the backplane) and the CD rom.

I think we can use the hard drive enclosures that are there now once the back plane is removed (assuming the same size of drives).  Getting the power and SATA cables in there might be tight.  I do not believe our case has the side mount trays (just the front hot swap).

My major concern is bios and software changes that relate to the hardware change.  We are not masters with the OS (Win server 2008R2) and we have not fussed with the BIOS much at all (if any!).  So there would be a steep learning curve  if ran into any significant issues (and I can think of a few easily).

We do have to do something though.  We need to get some redundancy back into the system (such as automated back ups to a spare drive or a return to the RAID 1 setup).  The path to that due to the age of the machine does not seem to simple (barring doing manual back ups to an external drive).

Im sorry if I did not relate what I mean about the BIOS correctly (rank amateur here).

We are using a single drive right now and it is not part of a RAID (though it was originally).  It is plugged into the backplane and into the H200.  In that set up would it still be writing to the drive in a way that could not work when moved to the SATA port? (its not striped or....)

This is the SATA cable we provide for a cabled drive configuration:

Y688K

I'm not sure if it will reach the drives if they are in the front carriers.

I'm not sure what BIOS and software issues you are referring. The only change you will make in the BIOS is setting the SATA mode to what you want. You will need to reinstall the operating system and all software or restore from backup. The H200 writes data in a specific format that the embedded controller cannot properly read. You cannot migrate the drives from the H200 to the embedded controller and retain the data.

https://www.dell.com/perc/

Thanks

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@DaveGTech wrote:

We are using a single drive right now and it is not part of a RAID (though it was originally).  It is plugged into the backplane and into the H200.  In that set up would it still be writing to the drive in a way that could not work when moved to the SATA port? (its not striped or....)

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You cannot migrate disks from an H200 to the embedded controller and retain data, even a non-RAID disk. It will either not be seen or the data will be corrupted.

Not a T310, but on an R410, a drive that is connected directly to the SATA and boots will also boot off of the SAS 6ir.  I believe a single drive will not have any additional information on it, so you could try it.  Worse case, it just won't boot.

If you do have an issue where it will not boot, then you can boot to a clonezilla livecd and clone the booting drive to a new drive attached directly to the sata controller.  It doesn't have to be a new drive, but it will need to be one that is safe to be completely erased and is larger than the drive you are imaging.  Once you have imaged the source drive, you should be able to remove it from the system and boot off of the directly connected drive.

Thank you for the information!

With the information you both have provided I think we will just continue with our plan "B" (continue vigilant back ups on and off site with testing).

Our hardware is old enough that spending significant money on parts or labor is probably not a sound decision.  Being down for a day or two while we sort through teething pains just to abandon the H200 controller (and get new drives in) seems to be too much of a risk. Especially since it is functioning fine right now on the single drive off the H200.

Again, thank you for your input!

(plan C.. add a new drive to a different slot on the back plane see if it explodes....)

As cheap as the r410s are on ebay, you could actually purchase a second one and have a mirrored setup to test on that you can swap into production.  I got my r410 for under $100 shipped, and it's 10x as fast as any used desktop at that price level.