We are planning to build a hyper-v server to host a number of VMs. I would like to buy a used/refurbished Poweredge (prob a 710 or 720) and put in some Samsung 850 Pros or EVOs. With 64GB or more of RAM and 2 6-core or 8-core processors and we should have a server that can handle quite a few VMs.

I have seen a lot of different information about what is supported on what Dell PERC cards and wanted to see what the current landscape is because I know there have been changes to firmware that has affected some of the SSD related issues. I looked at a similar project in the past but that was when the Dell firmware did not “play nice” with 3rd party drives. I also need some recommendations on which PERC to get. The 710 options are PERC6i or H700. The 720 has 3 options, H310, H710, and H710P. If I had a lot more money I would look at a PE 730 which has the newer H730 PERC available…

I like the idea of using Storage Spaces and letting windows see the raw SSDs to better manage SDD firmware updates, smart reporting, support for TRIM, etc. I know SSD can be “safely” used in RAID arrays at the PERC level by over provisioning them but I have used Storage Spaces on another server and like some of the features like more flexibility when adding more storage. So to me SS seems a better solution for SSDs in a windows server environment.
Some concerns:

- Older PERCs did not support TRIM. I have seen some firmware release notes that list adding TRIM support but there was no detail. Was this in RAID mode? Non-raid mode?

- What is the best mode to use with the PERC? I have seen reference to “non-raid” and also “pass-through” and also “HBA” and also “JBOD”. Are these all the same? If not what are the differences? I have also seen people create single drive RAID 0 arrays to let the OS see each drive but then the OS does not have direct access to the drive itself as it has to go through the abstracted VD layer.

- PERC caching. Obviously better performance is desired. I have read for some PERCs the cache only is used with RAID mode VDs. So if you do any kind of “pass-through” mode the cache is not used. Is this still true with newer firmware and newer PERC models? Is this just something that Dell hasn’t completed yet or is there a fundamental reason the cache cannot be used this way?

- OS drives vs data drives. Windows server cannot boot from Storage Spaces. So I would need different physical drives for that. The hyper-v OS is tiny, I have even run it from an 8GB flash drive on test systems. Ideally I could create a RAID 1 mirror of two cheap drives like 36GB 10K 2.5” drives. But from what I read the backplane can not have mixed HDD and SSD right? So I would need to put the OS on additional SSD drives. I have two older 840 Pros lying around I could use for this.

Thanks