We are in the process of replacing old hardware, however we want to utilize some of our R510s as storage arrays. We purchased 4TB drives with the hope of using FreeNAS to run the RAID and integrate with our VMWare infrastructure. Shortly after installing the new drives, we realized that we had a SAS 6iR RAID controller, which does not allow for pass-through. What would everyone suggest our next step should be? We were looking into purchasing a PERC H700, but found out that does not have pass-through capability either, unless you RAID0 each drive.

Thoughts?

Hello,

I have a used C6100 with the "INTEGRATED INTEL ICH10R SATA RAID" controller. I want to upgrade the raid controller so it will be compatible with a VMware VSAN home lab.

Can I disable the integrated controller and add in a Perc H730 or 730P controller? Any concerns?

Thank you,

Hi,

recently I purchased used DELL T310 Poweredge server (generation 11). Now I need to get some RAID controlled for it.

Here are some requirements:

- Win 2012 support

- RAID5 support

- Compatibility with server

- Reasonable price.

I tried calling Dell support and they told me to use H200, which does not meet first 3 requirements. So need some help from community now.

I've acquired a second hand R520 with a PERC H710 and thought I'd pick up two SSDs to use in it with CacheCade.  These work fine and are usable in CacheCade however, when they're inserted the fan speeds ramp up to 5880 RPM.  The SSDs are a cheap brand (Apacer) and are obviously registering as unsupported by the controller and flashing an amber light on the enclosure but they work fine.  Is it normal for the fans to speed up with SSDs attached or is this a result of the drives being unsupported?  Is there any way to bring the fan speeds back down again?

Bonjour,

j'ai un petit soucis sur un serveur R610 en RAID5 avec 3 disques et carte RAID H700.

Le 1er disque en état "Foreign", le second en "Failed" et le 3eme en "Oneline".

Le virtual disque en état "Offline".

Puis-je faire un clear au niveau du "Foreign config" pour reconstruire le 1er disque ou dois-je attendre de remplacer le disque en "Failed"?

Merci d'avance de votre réponse.

I have an internal H700 controller in an R410 purchased in 2011; I just upgraded the drives from SATA 7200 to SAS 6G 15k, but I noticed the cache was in WriteThrough mode.  Upon further investigation, I saw the battery had dropped below the warning threshold capacity.  I ordered 3 new ones (actually, they appear to be refurbs.....the Dell sticker has a mfg date of ~late 2015, but the MegaCli command reports a manufacture date of 2007).  After installing in the first server, it started a learn cycle as I expected it would, but said at the time the expected time to full recharge was around 20 hours....quite a bit more than the 4 I've seen other people report it "should" take.  Now, ~4 days later, it appears to have stalled, and is neither charging or discharging, and the state is unknown:

BBU status for Adapter: 0

BatteryType: BBU
Battery State: Unknown
  Battery backup charge time : 0 hours

BBU Capacity Info for Adapter: 0

  Relative State of Charge: 37 %
  Absolute State of charge: 25 %
  Remaining Capacity: 469 mAh
  Full Charge Capacity: 1275 mAh
  Run time to empty: Battery is not being charged.
  Average time to empty: Battery is not being charged.
  Estimated Time to full recharge: Battery is not being charged.
  Cycle Count: 19
Max Error = 2 %
Remaining Capacity Alarm = 190 mAh
Remining Time Alarm = 10 Min

BBU Design Info for Adapter: 0

  Date of Manufacture: 06/12, 2007
  Design Capacity: 1900 mAh
  Design Voltage: 3700 mV
  Specification Info: 8000
  Serial Number: 2656
  Pack Stat Configuration: 0xe4ac
  Manufacture Name: SMP-PA
  Firmware Version   :
  Device Name: X848376
  Device Chemistry: LION
  Battery FRU: N/A
  Transparent Learn = 0
  App Data = 0

BBU Properties for Adapter: 0

  Auto Learn Period: 90 Days
  Next Learn time: Fri Oct 21 18:39:16 2016
  Learn Delay Interval:0 Hours
  Auto-Learn Mode: Enabled

Exit Code: 0x00

I update the controller firmware to 12.10.7-0001 (from 12.10.1-0001) last night, and after rebooting it was in a charge period for a bit, but this morning it appears to have only reached its current 37% (remaining capacity has been at 469 mAh for awhile now).  Anyone have any thoughts to try to get it to charge?  I'd like to not have to go through the process of returning these, especially if they aren't bad and this is just a configuration problem.

Thanks in advance.

We have many R730xd devices installed and have a query with regards to the part number of the RAID cable from the front hard drive backplane to the PERC H730P controller. In one of our servers, the cable has a part number of FVPCF whilst in another server, it has a part number of 8717G. The only difference I can see is that the cable is a different colour. We have tried searching online but cannot see anything untowards. Do both cables work without any issue or is there a specific part number for a particular server? Both servers have PERC H730P controllers installed.

Any assistance will be appreciated.

We are using Dell R430 servers with PERC H730 Mini raid controller with 4 SSD disks attached. Every disk attached as separate RAID0 device. And we run aerospike database on this servers.

We tried to configure disk system according to aerospike manuals but perfomance was bad - read latency was very high with big spikes every 10-30 seconds. But when I turned on WriteBack policy on - everything became good even on read only tests.

How can write caching policy affect read performance in read only tests?

According to every manual of configuring ssd disks with raid controllers write policy should be set to WriteThrough, but in our configuration it doesnt work.

We also tried to attach our disks in HBA mode and again got same performance as in case when write policy was set to WriteThrough.

And we tried to use Intel SSD disks and Dell SSD disks and there were no difference in tests. Behavior was the same. So we made conclusion that problem is in raid controller.

Can somebody explain that behavior?

Hello Everyone,

I've inserted 2 new HGST SAS HDD (HUC156060CS4204) into my PowerEdge R515 and for some reason Capacity & Available Raid Disk space are showing 69.25 GB in OpenManage

I tried to use OpenManage Server Update Utility to update system drivers but still no luck.

PERC H700

2.3.0

Hi, 

i am in a panic mode and I hope you can help/guide me please.

Our Dell T420 server has a RAID 5 configuration with 4 discs. One of the disks has a flashing orange light. 

Looked in OMSA and it was showing the drive as failed. Server was re-booted and it came up fine and is operational. I Looked in OMSA Physical Disk and it is showing 3 HDDs ONLINE and 1 as FOREIGN.

In Virtual Disk it is showing the 3 HDDs as online and green ticks.

I have replacement drive coming tomorrow and I am very nervous as to what steps to take to replace the failed drive.

I will really appreciate some step by step direction to resolve my case please.

Thank you! 

Dell PowerEdge T130

PERC H200

Current Setup: Raid 1 with 2 drives running Window SBS 2011

What we are trying to do: Add 2 more identical drive purchased from Dell.

Issue: Cant add to current raid config. Everything is grayed out.

Questions:

I assume adding 2 extra drives to the already config doesn't work

Can we purchase a 2nd Channel cable for the other two and run a 2nd raid 1 for these?

Will this hurt performance?

Last resort. Should we backup the server and reconfig all drives to that single raid?

I'm going to upgrade from 3x300GB to 3x900GB drives and use wbadmin to backup the data and restore to the new drives.

What needs to be done to the existing array to prepare the drives to be removed?
Is there any information that I need to record in the event that I have problems with the new drives and need to reinstall the old drives.

Is it best to power down the server and remove old drives, insert the new drives, power up the server and configure the drives via the H310 configuration utility?

Is there a recommended process when using wbadmin to use the additional space in the array when restoring the data?

Possible regression in PERC H710P Mini firmware version 21.3.0-0009 or above ( 21.3.1-0004 or 21.3.2-0005 ).

Hello,

  We have a few Poweredge R720(xd) hosts, running RHEL6.6 and 6.7.  I am wondering if anyone else has seen...

  for the megasas driver interrupts for the versions of the firrmware mentioned, we only see interrupts on the first interrupt, irqbalance (with latest RHEL6 NUMA fix) is spreading all the interrupts over all the CPUs, so with only one interrupt in use all the interrupts land on one (or sometimes two) CPUs.  On hosts with a high IO load these CPUs are a limiting factor as they are saturated handling the interrupts.

  I suspect the PERC H710P Mini firmware version 21.3.0-0009 or above ( 21.3.1-0004 or 21.3.2-0005 ) is responsible because there are a few hosts that display this behaviour (only first interrupt in use), and all the hosts with the problem have these firmware versions, while all hosts without the behaviour have older versions of the firmware.  I have compared hosts that have and do not have this behaviour, and they have been identical in all things (Hardware, BIOS, OS daemons, kernel and drivers) apart from the PERC H710P Mini firmware version.

This is seen by running:

> cat /proc/interrupts | egrep 'CPU|mega'

I have been checking hosts using:

> echo -n goodhost{1..16} badhost{1..6} | xargs -d' ' -I {} ssh {} "awk -v hostname=\$HOSTNAME '/:.*[1-9].*megasas/{count++} END {printf \"Host %16s has %2d megasas interrupts in use, \",hostname,count;if(count==1){printf \"NOT OK. \"}else{printf \"OK. \"}}' /proc/interrupts;/opt/dell/srvadmin/bin/omreport storage controller | grep '^Firm';" | sort -nk 4
Host   badhost1 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host   badhost2 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host   badhost3 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host   badhost4 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host   badhost5 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host   badhost6 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host   badhost7 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.0-0009
Host   badhost8 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.0-0009
Host   badhost9 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.0-0009
Host  badhost10 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.0-0009
Host  badhost11 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host  badhost12 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host  badhost13 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host  badhost14 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host  badhost15 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.2-0005
Host  badhost16 has  1 megasas interrupts in use, NOT OK. Firmware Version : 21.3.1-0004
Host  goodhost1 has 12 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost2 has 12 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost3 has 12 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost4 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost5 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost6 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost7 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost8 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host  goodhost9 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost10 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost11 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost12 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost13 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost14 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost15 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007
Host goodhost15 has 16 megasas interrupts in use,     OK. Firmware Version : 21.2.0-0007

Thanks,

Peter (Stig) Edwards

Hello,

I am new to the forums here. I just recently purchased a Dell PowerEdge T20 a few months ago. I came into possession of a LSI MegaRaid 9240-8i raid controller. 

My OS SSD is connected to onboard SATA port and not in any raid. After installing the controller into the top or bottom PCI-E slot, the card is detected by the system, but I am unable to enter configuration utility and Windows 10 says that the device cannot be started in Device Manager. 

I read some article that onboard RAID needs to be disabled for the raid controller to take over. Setting SATA operation to AHCI or ATA in BIOS can't see the boot disk at all. Setting to Legacy boot mode also doesn't show the disk. I have to leave it on UEFI and Onboard RAID for it to be able to boot.

Is there something I need to do to make the raid controller work? What settings do I need to disable/change in the BIOS?

I have a poweredge T410 and 2x 3TB Seagate Constellation SATA drives. I don't want any RAID setup. Is this possible?

From what I can see the H700 supports 3tb SATA but not JBOD

The H200 supports JBOD but not 3TB

The H800 does not support SATA

Direct to motherboard does not recognise the drives at all.

I can't confirm if dell certified drives are required. 

Please help. I will purchase anything to make this configuration work (don't say new server).

Thanks!

I have 4 drives in a virtual disk all on controller 0. I have 2 drives on controller 1. ALL physical drives are showing OK.  The 4 drives on controller 0 are RAID 5. The 2 drives on controller 1 I have setup as one being dedicated hot spare and one being global hot spare. One of those 2 drives failed and I have replaced it with a new drive. SInce doing that, I am getting a yellow trriangle on the enclosure stating it's in a degraded state. I don't know what to do here. 

Please HELP.

Our backup server (Dell PE R720XD) has recently stopped booting.  Even though all of the drives light up green the boot process stalls at "Adapter at Baseport is not responding.  No Adapter_"

I found that our previous IT guy had installed it upside down so I figured something was unseated.  I opened it up and reseated the controller but still no joy.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thank you

I am currently running PowerEdge R610 with two 146 GB drives in RAID1 configuration, with Debian as OS. I am considering expanding the total capacity with two more drives, as the free space is getting pretty low. I can afford some downtime, if necessary.

My question is: Can I easily add two more drives and switch to RAID10 on the fly to increase the total capacity without any data loss? If so, how would I go about doing it? Or will I have to make a full backup, destroy the array, re-create it and restore the data afterwards?

So i have a power edge 840 . I have 2 Hard Drives connected. they are both 80GB. I try to install windows server 2008 standard. it wont's let me install windows server 2008 because it says it won't recognize the hard drives. I look at that hard drive folder (tru windows's windows server 2008 disk) And i see that windows is installed on one of the hard drives. Then I try to boot up windows but it just says. '' Invalid boot.INI file'' then '' booting from c:\windows\'' and then '' NTDETECT fail '' And then it does nothing. If you press a key on the keyboard it will just reboot the server. it was amazing.I din't like this. i reinstalled windows server 2008 standard. NOTHING. All my members that are part of this server group are counting on me. Please Please help me.

Good day all!

Inherited some real trouble in the server room.

basics:

Power Edge R410 (circa 2012)

Currently running WinSmallBiz Server 2011 Std

4 - 500GB hard drives in RAID10 array.

PERC 3 (hardware card ...i think)

challenge:

1)Never worked with raid10. 

2) Two (2) of the 4 drives have failed, and on more is degrading.

need to fix asap....

3) Server went down a few weeks ago... took 2 hours and 3 dozen reboots to get it back up.... taking server offline / shutdown.. probably not good option at this point...

have tried the following already.... 

Thinking, as with a few other raid type arrays, that the size may not matter of the HD... I installed a 1TB HD(SAS), into one of the dead spots. Spun up, recognized the drive. DID NOT recognize as RAID avail/compliant. (Again this drive IS an Enterprise type SAS, and stated as raid comp.) rebuild would not start auto, went through Dell OM to try it that way... no luck. only thing server would let me do is assign a drive letter and use it for back up. so used windows/OM back up configure, and got a good complete back up. Had another brand new hdd avail. so spun down the 1tb and installed a 2tb. same demise here...  this thing is like a ticking time bomb.... looking for suggestions quick. do i try a 500GB drive to hopefully rebuild on its own.... or do i build a small server on the side connect the back-up drive restore from the back up and run that while taking down the old server to replace drives etc....? please help.. any ideas here would be great. thanks

j