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Dell R730xd with PERC H730 and Non-RAID/HBA mode
Hi all,
I have a new Dell R730xd with a PERC H730 card. I've got six 4TB drives connected to it. This works fine in RAID mode, but the card also has support for "HBA mode". That is, the card works as a basic HBA and turns off RAID functionality. When in HBA mode the card software can see the drives, but they never make it through to the OS. The drives are not detected in POST as Non-RAID and there's no option to convert them to Non-RAID.
I've talked this through with tech support, who've been really helpful, but we can't find a solution. It seems to work on their server but not mine.
So I'm posting this here to see if anybody else is using this configuration, or to find out if anybody has had the same problem and maybe even solved it. Let me know!
Thanks,
Tim.
pricemc1
3 Posts
3
September 30th, 2015 14:00
I know this thread is kind of old but I thought I would add my experience. I have serveral R730xd with PERC H730P Mini's in them. On my systems it is not necessary to use HBA mode to get the operating system (ESXi in my case) to recognize the individual drives. You need to go into the PERC config though and mark each physical drive you want to be native accessible to the OS as a non-RAID drive. I have our systems configured with a RAID-1 virtual disk in the PERC and then the remaining 16 drives are configured as non-RAID so they all show up in the OS. In our case we wanted the drives running the ESXi OS to be redundant and then we wanted the other drives to be used and managed by VMware VSAN which needs to see the drives in their native mode. If your not seeing the ability to mark drives as non-RAID then I would suggest upgrading the PERC to the latest firmware and see if that capability shows up.
TimBishop
5 Posts
2
September 30th, 2015 14:00
Yes, on newer cards I can do exactly that. The original problem turned out to be a bug in the card's firmware. It needed to be factory reset right after switching it in to HBA mode, then the non-RAID option appears. After that it behaved normally.
TimBishop
5 Posts
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December 11th, 2014 12:00
Yup - we eventually got there with support. Looks like the card doesn't properly reset so needs a helping hand :-)
Tummak
1 Message
1
December 11th, 2014 12:00
We experienced the same issue as well. I was able to resolve the issue but performing a factory reset in the HBA. After the reset and reboot reenter the HBA configuration again and enable HBA mode and your good.
Madhana
4 Posts
0
August 3rd, 2017 09:00
I have a Dell R720xd with H710P mini PERC controller. Is it possible to expose non-RAID/raw disks to the OS as it is suggested in this thread for a H730P?
ThisNameWasAvail
1 Message
0
May 19th, 2022 05:00
Many years later... Azure HCI (which is Windows-based). Azure HCI requires true native visibility. Non-Raid mode still presents the drive as "DELL PERC H730 Mini SCSI Disk Device" in Windows. This isn't good enough for HCI. It must show the drive itself, "Seagate..." or "Hitachi"... or "Samsung"...
Is there a way to do this? I've searched all over but haven't yet found a solution. I've even purchased and tried an H330.
DELL-Chris H
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May 19th, 2022 07:00
ThisNameWasAvail,
The only way of doing what you're needing is by using an HBA330, not the H330. The reason being is that the HBA gives block level access to the drives, where the PERCs don't.
Let me know if this helps.