PERC H700 Raid controller?


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11 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

RAID controllers are not recommend for unRAID, you shroud use a plain HBA, e.g. H310

 

So why is that? Does it give issues?

 

if I bought a H200 or H310 already flashed to IT mode would it be plug and play? Plug into existing cabling and still use the existing backplane?

 

Heres the inside of my R610...

3249EEC3-0885-42E3-8251-39202AEDE817.jpeg

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11 hours ago, Lenny Warren said:

So why is that? Does it give issues?

Mainly two issues, most will not pass SMART info, so you can't get warnings for any disk issues and some will also identify disks differently, so if in the future and if you need to change it unRAID might not recognize the disks and a new config needs to be done.

 

More serious still some RAID controllers present the disks with a custom size that will make them unmounbale if the controller is replaced.

 

11 hours ago, Lenny Warren said:

if I bought a H200 or H310 already flashed to IT mode would it be plug and play?

With plain HBAs or onboard SATA controllers changing them is always plug'n play, with RAID controllers see above, it might work, it might not.

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13 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

Mainly two issues, most will not pass SMART info, so you can't get warnings for any disk issues and some will also identify disks differently, so if in the future and if you need to change it unRAID might not recognize the disks and a new config needs to be done.

 

More serious still some RAID controllers present the disks with a custom size that will make them unmounbale if the controller is replaced.

 

With plain HBAs or onboard SATA controllers changing them is always plug'n play, with RAID controllers see above, it might work, it might not.

 

Cheers, I’ve ordered a pre-flashed H200 from eBay. ?

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  • 1 month later...

I've got an H700 in my PowerEdge T310. It worked with an all Dell 4 SAS drive array, as long as I set each drive as a RAID 0. At that point unRAID seemed to get to the drives, format and allow me to set up the array with parity. Everything seemed to work fine.

 

I am currently replacing the lower capacity drives with some 4TB SATA Ironwolf drives - and while the H700 sees the drives, they are currently showing up as "Blocked". Some have posted elsewhere that the H700 can be reflashed (with a Dell PERC firmware update) to accept non-Dell drives, but I've not gotten that far yet. If I find some more information, I'll post in in the thread that I am posting to for my own unRAID system.

 

Here is a recent posting on the topic:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/dell-perc-h700-adapter.16158/

Edited by rollieindc
Adjustment of H700 information
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So, I managed to update the firmware in my H700 RAID Adapter in my PowerEdge T310. There was one interesting thing to realize - that there are different firmware updates for the ADAPTER card (like the one shown) and the INTERNAL cards used in other systems like the R710. I made up a DOS boot  USB Stick, booted up DOS, and then expanded the software, transferred to the USB, and ran the "update.bat" file to update my ADAPTER firmware with version A12. After flashing and rebooting, the T310 and H700 recognized my Seagate 4TB Ironwolf SATA drives that were inserted into the front drive slots - and identified them as "ATA" drives.

 

I am currently setting each drive up individually as RAID 0 through the H700 controller, initializing them and plan to let unRAID deal with the raid/parity redundancy like I did with the previous set up I had with all Dell Drives. That seemed to work ok in unRAID ver 6.4.  I did see a few places that talked about the potential of flashing the H700 into "IT", but I've not seen the ADAPTER version successfully flashed into "IT" mode. 

 

More on the H700 cards/adapters here.

To get the DOS firmware update tool, go here... (look for the ZPE version, e.g. SAS_RAID_H700A_12.10.6-0001_A12_ZPE.exe )

 

Edited by rollieindc
fixed text
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Just keep in mind you are going to have issues if you need to change controllers. Be EXTRA vigilant keeping up with which serial number is assigned to each slot, because if you have to move drives to a different controller the normally automatic unraid drive slot detection will show that the drive is missing. You will need to do a new config and manually assign the drives to the correct slots.

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1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

Just keep in mind you are going to have issues if you need to change controllers. Be EXTRA vigilant keeping up with which serial number is assigned to each slot, because if you have to move drives to a different controller the normally automatic unraid drive slot detection will show that the drive is missing. You will need to do a new config and manually assign the drives to the correct slots.

 

Noted! I realize this is a potential risk, and probably a significant reason to use the H200 flashed into IT mode and used as a HBA (which I have read has been done successfully.) For me, I plan to take a snapshot of the RAID configuration with my cellphone, and place it in a safe spot. ?

 

And just to follow up Jonathan, and to be clear, *IF* the H700 were to fail ? , and I replaced it with another H700 Adapter (flashed to the same A12 firmware), I could still assign the same HDD (via the serial numbers) into the same RAID configuration (drive for drive) and still be able to recover the unRAID array - Right? ? 

 

And even if I were to have a HDD fail, I could still rebuild the array through unRAID by replacing the drive (and initializing it into a new RAID 0 drive).

 

I get it that it's not as easy... but unless I missed something, it's still "doable."

Edited by rollieindc
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8 hours ago, rollieindc said:

*IF* the H700 were to fail ? , and I replaced it with another H700 Adapter (flashed to the same A12 firmware), I could still assign the same HDD (via the serial numbers) into the same RAID configuration (drive for drive) and still be able to recover the unRAID array - Right? ? 

Yep.

8 hours ago, rollieindc said:

I get it that it's not as easy... but unless I missed something, it's still "doable."

Perfectly doable.

 

It's just that there are so many different levels of tech experience represented here on this board that it is unwise to assume that someone already knows critical info that could bite them at the worst possible time, I.E. trying to prevent data loss when a part fails.

 

I just wanted to put that info into the front of your mind, so you know that when you have a drive or adapter failure that the normal first steps for recovery may well be different for you than they are for the majority here.

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15 hours ago, jonathanm said:

I just wanted to put that info into the front of your mind, so you know that when you have a drive or adapter failure that the normal first steps for recovery may well be different for you than they are for the majority here.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan, first, you're awesome. Thank you for that "heads up" - it's much appreciated that others here are helpful and friendly like that. I hope I can return the favor someday.

 

Second, I get it that I'm different. A Dell PowerEdge T310 running as a non-business NAS for photo storage with services (and VMs) in a personal server is the project challenge for me. I might regret some choices I make, but I'm looking for a low-end system (paid for out of my own pocket) that will meet my storage needs, be reliable and be secure.

 

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  • 3 months later...
On 8/13/2018 at 6:56 AM, jonathanm said:

I just wanted to put that info into the front of your mind, so you know that when you have a drive or adapter failure that the normal first steps for recovery may well be different for you than they are for the majority here.

 

Jonathanm,

 

Just to follow up on this thread, I exchanged the H700 for an H200 flashed over to IT. I did this as much to obtain the SMARTDrive information on all the attached drives, in the hopes of being able to increase the reliability of the system through knowledge of that information-  as anything else. I am not sure that the loss of the attached 512MB of cache memory on the H700 will be a performance hit, but since this system is mostly going to be pulling NAS storage duty, I think the overall performance will be "good enough" for my needs. Also the ability to work with the drives individually, or replace parts in case of failures - should, as you put it - follow "the normal first steps for recovery", and offer me the knowledge of others (more learned than myself) to increase the chances of any needed recovery.

 

Thanks!

- Rollie

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