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Replace/upgrade PERC S300 in an R310?
Greetings all. I have now discovered (after ordering) that this controller does not support ESX/vSphere. The docs say it does not support Hyper-V either. My first question is: Can I in fact install Hyper-V on the S300? ESXi will not even see it - will Hyper-V? Is this lack of Hyper-V support merely a formality or will the adapter really not work in this case?
If not, then what would e the easiest upgrade path to a non 'S' class RAID adapter? I do have four SAS hot-swap drives in this R310 and would like to use RAID 5. I was hoping to avoid a replacement of cables or harnesses etc since it looks like the cable assemblt back to the existing S300 is fairly clean.
Any chance I can literally unplug the connector from the S300 onto a replacement adapter, rebuild the array and be done with it?
Thanks all.
theflash1932
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January 24th, 2012 12:00
The cable connecting to your S300 could easily connect to a PERC H200 or PERC H700. VD's created on an S-series controller cannot be migrated to an H-series controller, but from the sounds of it, you haven't gotten far enough for it to matter.
theflash1932
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January 24th, 2012 14:00
As for the standalone HyperV server ... I don't have a server with an S-series controller to try, but I suspect that the driver base for HyperV would be comparable to Server 2008 R2 (pretty much a stripped down version of of the Server OS), but I don't know what would prevent it from working on the S300.
gchamby
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January 24th, 2012 13:00
Thanks for the reply. If I knew Hyper-V would work reliably on this controller I'd just leave it alone. Any insight there? Puzzling that these controllers seem to be such odd animals. When I think of "software RAID" I think of an OS doing the RAID - not a controller. What specifically is an H200 doing that an S300 is not? Is it literally dependant on the OS/driver for some of the RAID processing?
It also appears that these drives are not open source and so PERC S100/S300 support is lacking from some imaging products boot media. Nice...
theflash1932
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January 24th, 2012 14:00
H = Hardware RAID
S = Software RAID
The H200/H700 has a processing unit that bears the brunt of resources involved in maintaining and managing RAID. The S300 is a software/driver-based RAID and the only function of the card itself is to manage the devices and improve (arguably) overall performance and throughput of those devices over the onboard connectors.
www.dell.com/.../dell-software-raid-functionality-white-paper.pdf
The H700 has 512MB of battery-backed cache for a substantial performance improvement. H200 has no cache, but like the H700, all the RAID functions are handled by the controller.
gchamby
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January 25th, 2012 07:00
Thanks again. Hyper-V is installing now though I did have to download and supply the driver separately. I'm all for cost effectiveness, etc. but it seems these S series cards are more trouble than they're worth. I won't be purchasing another one....
Take care,
theflash1932
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January 25th, 2012 08:00
When you're spending as much as you do on a server, that additional $200-300 for a good controller isn't such a big deal. I always order them with a PERC 6/i or H-series.