Dell r510 Nas set-up.

[Joe James]

I have a dell r510 (specs in image). I would like to use this with a dell diskshelf in raid 10 to saturate a 10gb connection. (Yes there is an intel 10gb dual rj45 port card in one of my pcie slots). I have heard that the raid card in this thing is not great, and running in jbod is useless. Anyone have suggestions for an hba to connect a diskshelf?

[NelizMastr]

The LSI 9207-8E could be a good solution. I have the internal variety (the 9207-8i) in my server and that works rather well, even with SSDs.

You could also get a 9211 as you're limited to PCIe 2.0 anyway, Dell also has this card rebranded as the Perc H310.

 

You'll also need two external SAS cables to connect the shelf to the server, but that's a given.

[Windows7ge]

If you're going for software raid what do you plan on using?

[Joe James]

3 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

If you're going for software raid what do you plan on using?

I want to use Unraid. I could be totally miss understanding this, but as I understand it. A raid controller set to jbod or an hba just acts as a connection for external drives and all the raid configuration will become software. Correct?

[Windows7ge]

22 minutes ago, Joe James said:

I want to use Unraid. I could be totally miss understanding this, but as I understand it. A raid controller set to jbod or an hba just acts as a connection for external drives and all the raid configuration will become software. Correct?

If you want to get technical Hardware RAID is still Software RAID the difference being what controller/processor manages the array.

 

If the RAID controller supports IT mode or you use an HBA the drives will appear to the OS as their independent disks. From there you can use whatever OS supported RAID you like. Or no RAID at all if you are so inclined.

[Joe James]

Perfect! Thats exactly what I want. Any good tuts on flashing a card to IT?

[Joe James]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

If you want to get technical Hardware RAID is still Software RAID the difference being what controller/processor manages the array.

 

If the RAID controller supports IT mode or you use an HBA the drives will appear to the OS as their independent disks. From there you can use whatever OS supported RAID you like. Or no RAID at all if you are so inclined.

I have one slight problem now, i only have 1 8 lane pcie and two 4x. The 8 is being used by my 10g card. Any suggestions? 

[Windows7ge]

45 minutes ago, Joe James said:

Perfect! Thats exactly what I want. Any good tuts on flashing a card to IT?

It's on my to-do list to write a guide on how to do this. I have not done it myself in quite some time but I know FreeDOS is a useful tool for it.

 

13 minutes ago, Joe James said:

I have one slight problem now, i only have 1 8 lane pcie and two 4x. The 8 is being used by my 10g card. Any suggestions? 

Are the backs of the x4 slots cut-out? So as to accept cards wider than x4?

[Joe James]

3 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

It's on my to-do list to write a guide on how to do this. I have not done it myself in quite some time but I know FreeDOS is a useful tool for it.

 

Are the backs of the x4 slots cut-out? So as to accept cards wider than x4?

Unfortunately not. Do they even make an x4 HBA?

[Windows7ge]

42 minutes ago, Joe James said:

Unfortunately not. Do they even make an x4 HBA?

If they do I have not seen them. Does the motherboard have a onboard controller you can connect to?

[Joe James]

Yes it does, its currently occupied by an H700 it is in the middle of the board though, so I would have to run an extension out the back to connect to a shelf. If I did put an 8x into a 4x would it just have 1/2 the bandwidth? The hba im looking at can handle 250 devices. Im only looking at 16x more drives.