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R710 H700 ESXI HOST UPGRADE
Hello,
I have R710 server 512MB CACHE h700 controller with 4 X 3.5 1tb sata drives in RAID 10 CONFIGURATION (1 array , 2tb)
the server running vmware esxi host in production enviroment.
i am planning to increase the storage on that server and have 3 options on mind:
1. add 2 x 2tb sata drives to ne raid 1 array
2. add 2 x 1tb sata drives and expand existing raid10 aray to toal of 6 drives (if possible?)
3.backup the host and reinstall from scratch with 6 x 2TB drives on raid 10 array.
the most convinient option (and effected to cost) is NO 1 , i know that the newly created raid 1 array will perform slower than the existing raid10... the question is how much slower it will be? (didn't find documentation that compare both options) and if it will effect the perfomance of the existing raid10 array?
Will be glad to accept any advice.
Regards,
Arik.
DELL-Daniel My
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March 5th, 2012 10:00
Hello Arik
Option 2 is not possible. The H700 does not support raid 10 reconfiguration. The new array should not degrade the performance of your existing array, it is possible though. If performance is reduced it would be because of the cache on the controller getting full from the extra information passing through. If there is a high amount of writes going through on both arrays that causes the cache to become full then all writes would be slowed down.
Regarding performance, it would be a lot of speculation. In general, the write times would be the same or faster with the RAID 1 due to less calculations on the controller during writes. Also, reads would be the same or slower on the RAID 1 due to less available bandwidth from data being available from multiple drives.
Maybe one of our community members that has benchmarked these two configurations on the same equipment can give you some more exact information on the performance difference.
Thanks
DELL-Daniel My
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November 29th, 2012 14:00
Yes, I would recommend using our custom ESXi 5.1 ISO to ensure the proper drivers are installed. It has the necessary drivers preloaded in the OS.
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-r710?driverId=XWYR5&osCode=XI51&fileId=3005015335
Thanks
TracidTrax
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November 29th, 2012 14:00
Hi we have a Dell R710 server using a PERC H700 Integrated RAID Controller 512MB Cache and x4 3.5" 2TB HDD's. Does ESXi 5.1 work with this controller?
TracidTrax
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December 2nd, 2012 19:00
thanks, also is there a guide on how to setup Dell Open Manage with ESXi and will vsphere show the RAID status of the internal HDD's?