Thanks for that - yes, I thought it was probably possible to achieve, but I don't want to spend money on an upgrade only to run into the same problems of rejecting the component (and, not knowing whether there is any advantage in doing this anyway!).
I suspect that the only people who can answer this are engineers from Dell, or Adaptec, or someone who has actually done the upgrade....
" I used to upgrade other RAID cards with happy abandon" On the other hand, I have done a number of raid cache upgrades, using the manufacturers exact recommended sticks, and issues show up sometimes more then a week later. The last module I tried an upgrade for was on a LSI u320-2, I ordered 4 different EXACT recommended modules, all produced errors days after installation, luckily all recoverable.
Never upgraded a Perc 3si, but from the adapters I have worked with, rarely do you get noticeable speed increases after 64 megs on older models. If you want a really noticeable speed improvement, you will need to upgrade to one of the newest raid systems.
Yes, that makes sense to me, thank you. Other resources I have looked at since original posting, do seem to regard the PERC/3 and its variants as not hugely impressive at the best of times.
re. upgrades - my experience was mostly with older Adaptec and Mylex products in HP or Compaq servers, which seemed pretty resilient to change - I had not battled with a PERC system before.
Present Perc adapters are Lsilogic OEM, Mylex was a separate company , taken over by AMI which was taken over by LSI. Dell has only used Adaptec for a very few adapters models, some of the Perc 3 series were Lsi some Adaptec.
Been doing raid since circa 1990, all raid generations impress me for about a year, then I want something faster :emotion-1:. Was impressed with my first 1 GB array raid 5 for a month, which was how long the drives lasted due to the the intense heat output ( around 130-140 degrees), don't remember exactly but likely the array had a whopping 1- 2 MB/sec output, if that.
ndaisley
4 Posts
0
April 4th, 2009 11:00
Oh, and I suppose the second part of my question is - would I get any speed advantage anyway, if those upgrades did work?
Thanks!
Cskills
1 Message
0
April 6th, 2009 13:00
Yes, it is possible:
http://www.dellramfinder.com/raid-controller-memory-dell-raid-controller-memory/dell-poweredge-expandable-raid-controller-series-memory/dell-poweredge-expandable-perc-3-si-raid-controller-memory/dell-poweredge-expandable-perc-3-si-raid-controller-memory.html
I hope this helps.
ndaisley
4 Posts
0
April 11th, 2009 08:00
Thanks for that - yes, I thought it was probably possible to achieve, but I don't want to spend money on an upgrade only to run into the same problems of rejecting the component (and, not knowing whether there is any advantage in doing this anyway!).
I suspect that the only people who can answer this are engineers from Dell, or Adaptec, or someone who has actually done the upgrade....
Nick
pcmeiners
4 Operator
•
1.8K Posts
0
April 11th, 2009 09:00
" I used to upgrade other RAID cards with happy abandon" On the other hand, I have done a number of raid cache upgrades, using the manufacturers exact recommended sticks, and issues show up sometimes more then a week later. The last module I tried an upgrade for was on a LSI u320-2, I ordered 4 different EXACT recommended modules, all produced errors days after installation, luckily all recoverable.
Never upgraded a Perc 3si, but from the adapters I have worked with, rarely do you get noticeable speed increases after 64 megs on older models. If you want a really noticeable speed improvement, you will need to upgrade to one of the newest raid systems.
ndaisley
4 Posts
0
April 12th, 2009 06:00
Yes, that makes sense to me, thank you. Other resources I have looked at since original posting, do seem to regard the PERC/3 and its variants as not hugely impressive at the best of times.
re. upgrades - my experience was mostly with older Adaptec and Mylex products in HP or Compaq servers, which seemed pretty resilient to change - I had not battled with a PERC system before.
Thank you for your answer.
pcmeiners
4 Operator
•
1.8K Posts
0
April 12th, 2009 09:00
Present Perc adapters are Lsilogic OEM, Mylex was a separate company , taken over by AMI which was taken over by LSI. Dell has only used Adaptec for a very few adapters models, some of the Perc 3 series were Lsi some Adaptec.
Been doing raid since circa 1990, all raid generations impress me for about a year, then I want something faster :emotion-1:. Was impressed with my first 1 GB array raid 5 for a month, which was how long the drives lasted due to the the intense heat output ( around 130-140 degrees), don't remember exactly but likely the array had a whopping 1- 2 MB/sec output, if that.