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104633
September 25th, 2008 08:00
PowerEdge T300 RAID Controller Question
I'm looking at purchasing a PowerEdge T300.
When going through the spec on the "Build Your System" page, under "1st RAID or SCSI Controller Card", the only option is "Not included".
Below that is the option for "Raid Connectivity", which says
The Dell PowerEdge™ T300 can be configured with up to 4 cabled or hot plug SAS or SATA Hard Drives. Dell can custom configure your internal storage solution with RAID if required. Choose from the options below. RAID configurations require Hard Drives of the same capacity and speed.
It gives me a number of options, all priced at £0.00. I've gone for the
C12- Add-in PERC6i controller, 2 hot-plug Hard Drives - RAID 1 [Included in Price]
- as I want two SATA drives, in RAID 1 config, hot swappable.
As soon as I select the C12 - Add-in PERC6i controller, the "1st RAID or SCSI Controller Card" option now gives me:
PERC 6/i SAS RAID Adapter, PCI-Express, Internal [add £210.00 or £7/month-1]
My question - do I need this PERC6/i SAS RAID Adapter? Is it an extra i.e. is RAID already included on the PowerEdge T300, and do I only need that Adapter if I went for SAS drives (I have specified SATA drives later on in the spec).
Also, will Windows 2003 SBS behave when being installed on a RAID1 config? Or should I install the OS on a seperate SATA drive, and have two drives in RAID 1 for all of the data?
Thanks.
When going through the spec on the "Build Your System" page, under "1st RAID or SCSI Controller Card", the only option is "Not included".
Below that is the option for "Raid Connectivity", which says
The Dell PowerEdge™ T300 can be configured with up to 4 cabled or hot plug SAS or SATA Hard Drives. Dell can custom configure your internal storage solution with RAID if required. Choose from the options below. RAID configurations require Hard Drives of the same capacity and speed.
It gives me a number of options, all priced at £0.00. I've gone for the
C12- Add-in PERC6i controller, 2 hot-plug Hard Drives - RAID 1 [Included in Price]
- as I want two SATA drives, in RAID 1 config, hot swappable.
As soon as I select the C12 - Add-in PERC6i controller, the "1st RAID or SCSI Controller Card" option now gives me:
PERC 6/i SAS RAID Adapter, PCI-Express, Internal [add £210.00 or £7/month-1]
My question - do I need this PERC6/i SAS RAID Adapter? Is it an extra i.e. is RAID already included on the PowerEdge T300, and do I only need that Adapter if I went for SAS drives (I have specified SATA drives later on in the spec).
Also, will Windows 2003 SBS behave when being installed on a RAID1 config? Or should I install the OS on a seperate SATA drive, and have two drives in RAID 1 for all of the data?
Thanks.
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Dev Mgr
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9.3K Posts
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September 25th, 2008 12:00
If you check the "Getting started guide" here and then check the specifications, you'll see that it under drives it says "drives connected to integrated drive
controller or RAID controller card". So integrated is only a drive controller, not a raid controller.
However, I would have thought that a SAS6iR would be offered. This card is cheaper than a PERC (only by US$100 here in the US on the systems that offer a PERC6 and the SAS6iR), but offers raid 1 and raid 0 only (which would be enough for you).
n7studios
6 Posts
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September 25th, 2008 13:00
Thanks for the tip.
However, I'm still confused, although it's starting to get clearer. Although I've selected the RAID Connectivity option as:
C12- Add-in PERC6i controller, 2 hot-plug Hard Drives - RAID 1 [Included in Price]
- I then need to specify the RAID Controller:
PERC 6/i SAS RAID Adapter, PCI-Express, Internal [add £210.00 or £7/month-1]
What I don't understand though is:
The RAID Connectivity option states "Add-in PERC6i controller... RAID 1". Surely that's going to give me RAID 1?
The RAID Controller option is above the RAID Connectivity option when I spec up the server, but the RAID Controller option only becomes available (and remains above the RAID Connectivity option) once I've selected a RAID Connectivity option.
Hopefully I'm making some sense - perhaps it's just due to a little confusion on the order of the spec page.
Dev Mgr
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9.3K Posts
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September 25th, 2008 17:00
The PERC6i can do raid 0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 50 and 60 or any combination of these (e.g. 2 disks in a raid 1 and 3 disks in a raid 5).
n7studios
6 Posts
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September 25th, 2008 19:00
Thanks - I've figured it out, it's just like you said.
There's a config option for a SAS controller, which then brings up the much cheaper SAS controller card.
Thanks for your help.
Dev Mgr
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September 26th, 2008 14:00
n7studios
6 Posts
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September 29th, 2008 07:00
That's fine - I was only looking for RAID 1.
The plan is to have two 250GB hard drives in RAID 1 configuration using the SAS6iR controller, and I've selected the hot swap option.
If a drive fails / goes offline, will the server still be bootable from the other (working) drive?
Is it as simple as swapping out the drive for another (same) drive?
In the past (years ago), installing the OS on a RAID setup wasn't always advised, and didn't always work. We've selected the SBS 2003 option through Dell to preinstall - will this work okay on the RAID?
Is the SAS6iR controller dual / multi channel? I looked through the manual, but may have missed the details telling me this.
Essentially we're looking for some redundancy for the server, in case a hard drive fails, with minimum (if any) downtime.
Thanks.