Replacing 750TB to 3TB HDD on my PowerEdge 2900

Another note: Your current setup probably has 2 virtual disks. This could be a raid 1 with 2 of the 750's and the rest in a 2nd virtual disk, or it could be a single raid set with 2 virtual disks.

The 2900 doesn't support UEFI, which means that it's bootdisk can only use 2TB (2048GB). Booting to a virtual disk larger than 2TB (even with the unsupported PERC H700) will mean you can only use the first 2TB. A data disk can exceed 2TB though. So, if you were to put a PERC H700 in the server and use an 8x3TB disk raid 5, make sure to make a boot virtual disk first that doesn't use the whole size (e.g. 100GB), and then a 2nd virtual disk that uses the rest.

To use a virtual disk over 2TB as a datadisk, you'll need Windows 2003 SP1 or later, VMware ESXi 5, or linux with a 2.6 kernel.

750GB is only listed as the max because it was the max at the time of the writing of those documents, as larger drives either weren't available yet or weren't tested yet.

As Geoff said, as is, the 2900 will only support 2TB drives - this is a limitation of the PERC 5/6 RAID controller, not the system itself.  The only Dell RAID controller that supports 3TB drives is the H700, which some people have put into the 9G servers (2900/2950) and have reported that it seems to work, although this setup is not supported by Dell.

So, for clarity here...

What if I boot off a SATA Port and use the PERC 5/i for storage only.  Will the PERC 5/i see the 3TB drives as 2TB?

Here's what I'd like to do and you guys and gals can tell me if I've been drinking my bath water...

Install Windows Server 2008 to a 256GB Solid State Drive SATA port 0 as the Boot Drive

Install 8 - 3TB (or larger) drives and RAID 5 them off the PERC 5/i controller.

Will the PERC 5/i see the 3TB (or larger) drives as they are or will it show the drives as 2TB?  Essentially, I'd like to get as much storage space as I can out of this.

what says you all? 

Hell rjemmett

What if I boot off a SATA Port and use the PERC 5/i for storage only.  Will the PERC 5/i see the 3TB drives as 2TB?

I can't say for sure what exactly will happen with unsupported equipment. It may not boot, it may not detect the drive, or it may only detect 2TB of the drive.

Install 8 - 3TB (or larger) drives and RAID 5 them off the PERC 5/i controller.

This goes back to the above post. Drives larger than 2TB are not supported on the PERC 5. We don't know what exactly will happen with them installed, but it will definitely not use the full 3TB if the drives are even detected.

Will the PERC 5/i see the 3TB (or larger) drives as they are or will it show the drives as 2TB?  Essentially, I'd like to get as much storage space as I can out of this.

My suggestion is to not attach drives larger than 2TB to the PERC 5. They are not supported and may not function at all. You may not even be able to use 2TB of the 3TB HDDs.

You will need an operating system that supports guid partition tables(GPT). You can't boot to GPT without a UEFI compatible system board, so you will need to create a normal NTFS partition for your boot drive, like the SSD option you mentioned above(Which is also unsupported, SSDs are not supported on 9th gen). You can then create a GPT data partition.

Learn more about GPT here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/gg463525.aspx

Thanks

As Daniel said, several things can happen if you hook up the drives to a PERC 5 ... if I remember correctly, I have seen people say the PERC sees only 2TB or that the drives are not detected at all.  This can depend on several factors  ... are you using Dell-branded drives, certified for use on Dell PERC controllers?  If not, then I would guess the chance of being detected and being usable drop off significantly.  Worst case scenario ... they are detected as 2TB and you can configure them into your RAID array, THEN have reliability/integrity problems.

Also, if I remember correctly, you won't be able to boot off the onboard SATA ports while using the PERC (there for optical and tape drives).

Thanks folk!  I played around with this and installed 4 -3TB drives into the PERC/5i and updated all the firmware, drivers etc.  The controller will only recognize the drives as 2TB Drives.  My next step is to install a PERC H700 to see if I can get the full 3TB to be recognized.

The PERC H700 and above CAN use 2TB drives (with the latest firmware), but the PERC 5 and 6 CANNOT - it is just NOT possible for a PERC 5/6 to use larger than 2TB drives.  The H700 is not officially supported in the 2900, but I have seen reports that it works fine.

Hi Rjemmett,

The 3TB disks you used in the PERC/5i, were they Dell drives, or 3rd party drives ?

I'm asking because i'm about to order disks for my PowerEdge 2900 with a PERC/5i controller and were planning on ordering some Seagate 2TB 7200rpm SATA disks, but i'm worried that it won't work with non-Dell drives.. 

Hope to head from you soon, because i'm a bit worried about spending alot of $ on something that does not work..

I'm planning on adding an additional raid controller to host 2x SSD drives to run in an raid1 config to host the operating system. Does anyone know if a secondary raid controller can be used in the 2900 together with the PERC/5i, or if that a bad idea ??

Best regards from Denmark,

OCMaster

The PERC 5/6 have no restrictions on certified vs. non-certified drives.  The H700 did ORIGINALLY lock out non-certified drives, but that lock-out was lifted in July 2010 via firmware update.  While non-certified drives are not locked out, you may experience significant or insignificant issues with non-certified drives, and you will likely experience significant issues with non-enterprise-class drives.  The PERC 6 is more picky about drives; the PERC 5 is more forgiving (as is evidenced by the large number of them being used as after-market upgrades to a wide range of systems).

The 2900 has an "integrated" slot for the RAID controller - specifically a SAS 5/6 or PERC 5/6, so while it may be possible to use a secondary controller, it may not be possible to BOOT to disks on that device.  SSD and HDD can be mixed on the PERC controllers, so you could run your RAID 1 on the PERC alongside the SATA RAID (they cannot be in the same virtual disk (array)), however the PERC 5 does not officially support SSD's, so you may find issues (including performance issues) running them on that controller.

Was anyone able to install a Dell H700 into a 2900? I purchased a H700 off of ebay and I had to use these cables (http://www.tripplite.com/sku/S510-003) to connect the H700 to the backplane but no matter what, I get a "SAS cable is missing or misconfigured" message on POST. I've been at this for weeks now and I'm at a complete loss. I'd like to use 4tb drives in my 2900 which is why I purchased the H700.

This is something that had bothered me for some time and Dell, being the typical US corporation, provided the expected "not supported" line. [profanity removed], I'll just scrape together some parts on eBay and give it a shot.

I started with a PowerEdge 2900 II. I wanted to convert this machine from a simple file server to a Hyper-V host. My requirements were 64GB RAM, two RAID-6 volumes with write caching, support larger than 2TB drives, 5400 series processors, TPM for BitLocker, and remote management. I ended up buying 4 sets of Kingston WS667/16G to bring her up to 64GB, the H700 with battery for the RAID and drive requirements, two new backplane cables to connect the 8087 ports on the controller to the 8484 ports on the backplane, a used motherboard from a PE 2900 III which supports the TPM, 64GB memory capacity, and 5400 series processors, two Xeon 5470 CPU's, a DRAC 5, an Intel i350-T2 dual port server NIC, four generic Dell drive sleds, and four Seagate Constellation ES.3 - 2TB SAS drives.

Removed all old parts, inserted new parts.

First off, and most important, I haven't been able to find this answered ANYWHERE despite searching the Googles for hours. Let me make this absolutely clear... 

IF YOU HAVE 6GBPS SAS DRIVES CONNECTED TO THE  BACKPLANE AND THE CONTROLLER IS CAPABLE OF RUNNING 6GBPS DRIVES, THE DRIVES WILL CONNECT AT 6GBPS. I'll attach a picture I took of the screen after I booted the machine for the first time that shows the Constellation ES.3 drives connected at 6gbps. This matter really irked me. Because if you haven't physically inserted a drive backed with a matching controller, YOU DON'T KNOW, DO YOU?

Anyway, the new drives are in their own RAID6 array and the original 147GB 15k drives are in their own RAID6 array. One fast, one large.

It was at this point where she started throwing the "SAS A Cable" and wouldn't boot without a keypress. Another annoying feature of this unnecessary error is that this interruption of the boot process would skip over the "CTRL+E" prompt to configure the used DRAC 5 I installed in her. I had a couple SAS cables from another job back at the house. I tried those, same result. I ordered the Monoprice cables that somebody else talked about on these boards, same result. Then it occurred to me to just move the piece of shi+ out of the RAID slot and into one of the regular PCIe slots. Since I had a pile of random Dell LSI controllers, and since they all follow the same form factor, I harvested a bracket from some sort of SAS6 / ir / iR / PERC / Whatever, and now I have a proper running system.

So for just a couple hundred bucks, and absolutely ZERO help from Dell, I was able to take this aging behemoth of a server and modernize it to a point that it's useful again. Since I'm using the maximum amount of RAM and the fastest processors that this board understands, this system should run rather well with a handful of Hyper-V VM's. At the very least, I should be able to get another 6 or 8 years out of this thing. The prices of these parts on eBay are crazy cheap and you can make a very decent server. I'm sure if you tried this same thing with a T710 or something of that same generation, you could have an even better machine for just a little more money. I'm thinking of doing that right now.

But keep in mind, none of what I've done is "supported" by Dell.

tl/dr:  If you receive "SAS Cable A (or B)" during POST, move the PERC to the 8x PCIe slot just below the PCI-X slots. Problem go away.

Thanks a lot for this precious testimony! I just bought a Gen II 2900 and I have in stock an Intel RS2BL080 RAID contrôleur (3+ TB compatible) witch I plan to install on the 8x PCI-E port on the motherboard. Can you tell me where you bought the cable compatible with the stock backplane and SFF 8087 contrôleur side please?

In my 2900, I have the optionnal 2 HDD Array for a total of 10 HDDs. The factory setup from the Perc 5i is one data cable directly to the main backplane, the second one to the optionnal array backplane with a third cable from the optionnal array to the main backplane. I'm wondering if I could use the same setup with my Intel contrôleur. It's a native 8 HDD contrôleur, but it's also written that we can use 32 drives with port replicators, so is it this? I'm aware that the bandwidth would not be optimal, but for 5900 rpm SATA HDD, I won't notice anything I guess.

Regards,

Thomas

Thomas, were you able to get your running properly?

Thaniel, I'm in the process of doing the same thing, maybe use the H710, but I need some guidance before I can start purchasing things on eBay. Can you contact me please thanks