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Replace 15k SAS Drives with SSD in R520
I have an older Dell PE R520 with a mixture of hotswap SATA and SAS drives connected to an integrated H710 (512Mb) RAID controller. The system is setup as a VDI server with Citrix Xenserver and VIAB. We're not getting the VDI performance we'd like, so my plan is to replace the 4 SAS 15K 300Gb drives with 4 SSDs. Currently the system has 2x500Gb SATA drives in RAID1 for the boot of Xenserver and then a RAID 10 volume with the 4 SAS drives for my VMs. The server has a 3 1/2" backplane with 8 drive slots.
My question is can I use 2 1/2" SSDs in the existing 3 1/2" slots? I presume there's an adapter. Also, can I use off-the-shelf SSDs like Intel or Samsungs? My VMs are primarily read intensive, so I don't think I need top-of-the-line Enterprise SSDs. I found some hybrid SSD drives on Dell's part site but they're only 3Mbps SATA drives and I'd prefer to use 6Mbps.
Thanks for any input.
Ken
shepcon
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January 27th, 2016 16:00
Thanks for your input. I'm looking at using the Intel DC S3510 2.5" 800GB SATA III MLC Enterprise Solid State drives. And I'll remove the SAS drives and only have the 4xSSDs in a RAID10 and then my ESXI install will go on my flash SD cards internally.
Ken
theflash1932
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January 27th, 2016 16:00
You cannot mix SAS and SATA in the same array, so you wouldn't be able replace SAS drives with SATA drives. You also cannot mix SSD and HDD, so you would need to do a backup/restore.
You can use "off-the-shelf" SSD's, but do some research ... not all consumer SSD's play nicely on RAID controllers. Intel tends to work better than others, but even then it isn't guaranteed.
You can get a 3.5" carrier for 2.5" drives.
http://www.amazon.com/tray-caddy-adapter-bracket-Poweredge/dp/B009DZBZJ8
theflash1932
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January 27th, 2016 18:00
Ah, gotcha ... like so many, I thought you were planning to swap out the SAS for SSD while keeping it live/online :)