Upcoming PERC H700 and PERC H800 Cards

Why dell will not reply to address the issue instead of deleting their customer’s posts...  i would imagine it is easy to fix with just a basic firmware update

ONCE AGAIN SHAME ON THE DELL MODERATOR!!!

This time they deleted my post with a claim that my: "post contains language that we believe reveals non-public information about Dell or another company or person."

Of course that is patently absurd since the server I bought specifically reports the name "LSI" on post of the computer and the H700 BIOS -- this is therefore obviously public information -- and also if you read the label slapped onto the face of the hard disk the server came with it says plainly on it that the hard disk is made by "SAMSUNG" for Dell.  Again, public information!!!  Nothing I said is "non-public". 

So unless Dell can be specific please, here is my post again:

==========================

Careful.  Not only is Dell censoring what hard disks we can use, but they are censoring what we can write about them.  I made the below post yesterday and they deleted it, supossedly for bad language!

I am an IT Consultant who switched to Dell servers for my clients about 10 or so years ago.  I had just taken delivery of a new T610 for a client and cracked the box open and replaced the hard disks with brand new Seagate Constellation (Enterprise class) RAID certified hard disks.  THEY ARE BLOCKED!  This is absolutely absurd and I am planning on sending the server back to Dell.  Their H700 controller is nothing more than a private labeled LSI controller and the hard disks the system came with were nothing more than crummy private labeled Samsung hard disks.  For Dell to pretend that they are doing something special with this hardware is a bold faced LIE!  This is all about making money and restricting what their customers can do with the hardware their customers buy.  What is worse, when you configure your server on Dell's website they do not make a disclosure (at least I saw none) stating that the controller will only function with Dell private labeled hard disks.  Further, they should not be marketing their controller as SATA if it will not function with all SATA compliant drives!

What is next?  Making us buy our blank CD media from Dell as private label media "certified" to work in their CD burners.  This is a fraud of the worst kind and they truly deserve to be taken to task on this restrictive and ridiculous practice.

I represent several dozen clients all of whom have bought Dell servers at my direction over the years.  This is stopping immediately.  I will not ever buy another Dell product just on principle, since there can be no justification for forcing us to pay them higher margins for private labeled product. 

It is ironic that Novell tried this same thing (HA HA - also with Samsung hardware) back in 1985 when they forced their channel to buy Novell servers which were nothing more than private labeled Samsung servers which Novell charged double for.

Dell - are you so ignorant that you do not learn from history!

As a 30 year verteran of the IT industry, my memory runs long and you have now succeeded in losing a once loyal customer.

Tom Shubert

e-mail: tom@tomshubert.com

This is a bit concerning, although more in principal than practice.  My company wouldn't have any problems purchasing replacement drives from Dell, and considering that we have support contracts to handle this, again, it's not likely to be an issue.

For the little shops, though... this could be pretty painful.  One of Dell's initial strengths and something that allowed them to grow & quickly react to the evolving hardware market was it's use of semi-generic hardware.  Granted, the server market has always been filled with custom components, but the ability to mix & match commodity parts is something that allows smaller customers to manage their costs & tweak performance as needed.

I guess Dell was just tempted too much by those huge margins that SAN vendors enjoy with their "certified" generic components.  I mean, if I told you that you could take a $100 1TB, repackage it & sell it for $500 and customers would blindly pay that much for it, you'd be tempted too, right?  Ok, not all customers are that ignorant..... so maybe you could make it a requirement?  Brilliant!  Guaranteed, controlled margin!

This is really bad. I just wanted to order a batch of R410 servers containing the H700 controller. I won't.

Trying to force customers to buy harddisks for obscene prices is not as clever as DELL appears to think. These customers won't come back.

Such a behaviour might be legal, but I'd feel cheated by DELL and I am glad I didn't fall into this trap.

Wow, thanks so much for posting this. I was configuring a 12-drive R510 (buying the base server and was going to add high end SAS HD's purchased separately). I googled the H700 to double-check it's performance and came across this doozy. What a headache. Now I need to find another manufacturer. Seems like every time I buy a dell i say it will be the last time. Then a year goes by and I forget about the pain. Glad I prevented the pain this time. How does a once-great company get so bad?

The latest firmware (released a week or so ago) 'unlocks' the raid controllers to allow any SAS and/or SATA drives. Your system probably wouldn't ship with it for a month or 2, but you can upgrade to the latest firmware when you receive the system.

Got a link to some "official" notification?

Also does it mean SATA 3Gbps drives can be used in an MD1200/MD1220?

Is the H700 still artificially limited to 16drive RAID volumes?

This is a bit concerning, although more in principal than practice. My company wouldn't have any problems purchasing replacement drives from Dell, and considering that we have support contracts to handle this, again, it's not likely to be an issue. For the little shops, though... this could be pretty painful. One of Dell's initial strengths and something that allowed them to grow & quickly react to the evolving hardware market was it's use of semi-generic hardware. Granted, the server market has always been filled with custom components, but the ability to mix & match commodity parts is something that allows smaller customers to manage their costs & tweak performance as needed. I guess Dell was just tempted too much by those huge margins that SAN vendors enjoy with their "certified" generic components. I mean, if I told you that you could take a $100 1TB, repackage it & sell it for $500 and customers would blindly pay that much for it, you'd be tempted too, right? Ok, not all customers are that ignorant..... so maybe you could make it a requirement? Brilliant! Guaranteed, controlled margin!

I am new to posting on the Dell forums but I came across this thread and didn’t see an answer posted and I wanted to post regarding the blocking of non-Dell certified hard drives on the H700 and H800. When the controllers were initially released the firmware blocked all non-Dell certified hard drives. However as of firmware revision 12.3.0-0032 released on 7-6-2010 non-Dell certified hard drives are no longer be blocked, this is listed as item # 7 under the Fixes and Enhancements section for the firmware update. There are newer firmware updates than this release so I suggest updating to the latest revisions. I have listed those below.

H700

H800

 <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

The versions that unblocked the drives can be found here

H700

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

H800