How to use and troubleshoot the S100/300 RAID controller with various operating systems

Article Summary: This article discussed using and troubleshooting the S100 and S300 RAID controller on various operating systems

Issue:

The S100/300 RAID controller is a software RAID device. It is supported on certain Dell servers with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

ESX and ESXi do not support either card for RAID setup. Refer to VMWare documentation for specific support models for ESX and RAID.

Additional Information:

For detailed information on S100/300 RAID controller, refer to the User's Guide. There you will find:

• Steps to configure the controller using the virtual disk management utility.

• How to initialize physical disks, create virtual disks, swap virtual disks and manage global hot spares.

• How to install the Microsoft Windows drivers.

  • Determining pre-installation requirements.

  • Installing the driver during operating system installation.

  • Performing the controller management setup procedure.

For additional information on the S100/300 controller, refer to Dell Knowledge Base Article When adding a PERC S300 RAID controller to a Dell 11G PowerEdge Server, S100 will not function, and onboard SATA may need to be reconfigured.

The definitive user guide for both controllers is available in white paper format on the Dell Support web site.  This whitepaper covers the methodology of the RAID implementation, how the systems integrate to Dell Storage Management software, and specific topics about performing operations in the controller BIOS.

On Server operating systems that do support the S100/300 controller, there is a way to recover from serious problems with degraded arrays if other troubleshooting steps have failed. The failed drive can be replaced and added as a global hot spare. this will cause a new drive to replace the failed drive and begin to rebuild the array. Refer to the Dell Community web site for how others have used OpenManage to verify this process is taking place.

Server 2012 does not currently support the S100 or S300 controller.  There is, however, a way to convert the controller to an on board SATA controller. Steps to perform this operation are available on the Dell Support Site. There are some choices that can be made if you choose not to convert to SATA. You may purchase a supported PERC controller from Dell. You may also use the Windows Server 2012 solution for RAID. This is all documented on the Dell Support Site.

If there is a need to administer recovery or install the operating system and there is any problem with the methods outlined in this article, there is an alternative method to slipstream the driver into the operating system. The idea is to use vLite or other slipstream tool to load the driver into the operating system binaries. The result is an ISO image that may be burned to a disk. This disk can be be used to boot to the newly burned Windows DVD to perform maintenance, install the operating system, or use  recovery options.