Dell PERC use case question

Be Rock · January 18, 2022

So I was given a retired Dell PowerEdge R720 rackmount server to tinker around with an I was curious about the PERC card. It's clearly intended for RAID and that was the default configuration it was in as I received it. My question is this: Is it possible to use the PERC card as a standard (non-RAID) HBA? I don't really think I would benefit from RAID in a meaningful way since I'll probably just be using it as a storage dump for personal junk. It's not going to see tons of regular reads/writes, and since the hardware is already pretty old I'm not confident that the PERC card itself is going to last (and a failed RAID controller is is a nightmare to recover from).

I'd rather just use it as an HBA and use software raid through windows so that a failed PERC card is becomes a plug-and-play replacement.

Is it worth it to purchase a dell HBA card? Or am I better off just removing the PERC an not replacing it (will the board even detect drives without it?)

wseaton · January 20, 2022

Depends on the card. 310s and lower need to be avoided because of reliability reasons. Those lower end PERCs were also just software RAID on a board and can actually throttle SATA SSD performance. Low end 300s and 100s are literally prone to catching fire as they get old.

From 330 on up things improve. 700s typically had write through cache, which really helps spinning drives but not so much SSD. Those cards had better on board processing and are still in limited use. Higher end PERCs are made by LSI.

You should be able to use the card in simple JBOD mode as you want. Biggest reason I don't like to do this is you have to use a dedicated driver, and if you are booting from them it just adds an annoying layer if you have to restore your PC.

Needfuldoer · January 20, 2022

I run an R720 at home, with a cross-flashed H310 Mini Mono card and TrueNAS Core.

The PERC mezzanine cards for the 12th gen Dell servers can be cross-flashed to IT (Initiator Target) mode. The host OS will just see a bunch of hard drives connected to a standard LSI HBA.

There are instructions and bootable drive images with all the tools you need here:

https://fohdeesha.com/docs/perc.html

If your server has an iDRAC 7 Enterprise license, you can mount the images over the virtual console. If it doesn't, you'll have to burn them to discs or to a flash drive with Etcher.

Which versions of the BIOS and iDRAC do you currently have installed? It's a process to get them up to the latest versions (especially if they're running 1.x firmware), but you get benefits like an HTML5 virtual console and support for E5-26xx v2 (Ivy Bridge) CPUs.

Be Rock · January 20, 2022

16 hours ago, wseaton said:

Depends on the card. 310s and lower need to be avoided because of reliability reasons. Those lower end PERCs were also just software RAID on a board and can actually throttle SATA SSD performance. Low end 300s and 100s are literally prone to catching fire as they get old.

I can totally understand - the lithium-ion battery on the PERC card itself is bulging like crazy and that obviously doesn't inspire much confidence. As I pointed out earlier, RAID controllers are a super-critical point of failure that just don't make sense in this home use case.se for home use.

6 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

Which versions of the BIOS and iDRAC do you currently have installed? It's a process to get them up to the latest versions (especially if they're running 1.x firmware), but you get benefits like an HTML5 virtual console and support for E5-26xx v2 (Ivy Bridge) CPUs.

Unknown - I haven't installed anything yet since I am waiting for the mounting brackets to arrive so it can fit into my rack alongside my network equipment.

My current plan is to swap out the 9mm optical drive up front for a 2.5" ssd caddy to use as a boot drive for Windows Server, and use the 16x 2.5" bays for storage drives.

If I just pull the PERC out of the system completely, will the system even see the drives or no?

wseaton · January 20, 2022

Some people fear dogs because they got bit by one as a kid and hold it against the entire species. I've learned to hate low end PERC (and HP BL240s) combined with RAID 5 because I've seen that combo wreak business data and cost more downtime than Ransomware. I have a lot of respect for Dell Iron. Some of those tower PowerEdge servers made in the 2000's will outlive the sun itself and can stop a tank round. The budget RAID controllers though are utter rubbish. I still run into 2012 and 2016 servers running on those older controllers with 10k spinners and I head right to they guy writing the checks and make it very clear he's playing with a Hellraiser cube with 3 sides solved. Easy enough and not that expensive to backup and restore that nightmare to a budget data center grade SSD. I swear you can hear the OS say 'thank you' when it boots off it for the first time.

Fortunately the exploding battery packs I've dealt with didn't cost a data loss BECAUSE they were RAID 1.

I still say if it's not a 700 or higher it's not worth it. If you are running SSD's off them check performance with Crystal Disk. If you see reads hover in the 300MB/sec category that's the same issue I've run into. Same issue with Intel RST and SATA SSD.

Needfuldoer · January 21, 2022

14 hours ago, Be Rock said:

I can totally understand - the lithium-ion battery on the PERC card itself is bulging like crazy and that obviously doesn't inspire much confidence. As I pointed out earlier, RAID controllers are a super-critical point of failure that just don't make sense in this home use case.e for home use.

You can pull the battery, once the card is in IT mode it won't know what to do with it anyway.

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Unknown - I haven't installed anything yet since I am waiting for the mounting brackets to arrive so it can fit into my rack alongside my network equipment.

Enter the service tag into the search on dell.com/support, and check the system configuration to see what it came with from the factory. If it shipped with V2 CPUs, you're good to go. If it shipped with V0 CPUs, you'll have to boot it up and see what you've got to work with. (Hopefully it has at least one CPU already. If not, pick up a bargain-basement V0 CPU like an E5-2603 so you can bootstrap it.)

Note: If your BIOS is older than 1.66.65,A00, do not update directly to the latest BIOS! Doing so will brick the motherboard. If your BIOS is older than that, you have to update to 1.66.65.A00 first, then to 2.10.10.10,A00. Then you can update to the latest version.

There's a good writeup and explanation here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/abuc09/psa_read_this_before_you_upgrade_your_firmware_on/

If your BIOS is any version newer than 2, you can use Dell's platform-specific update ISO. It should automatically update everything for you.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=8GV0F&oscode=naa&productcode=poweredge-R720

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My current plan is to swap out the 9mm optical drive up front for a 2.5" ssd caddy to use as a boot drive for Windows Server, and use the 16x 2.5" bays for storage drives.

That's what I did with mine, so I could use all 8 LFF bays for the storage pool. If yours doesn't have the optional RD1000 removable drive bay in the front, there might be drive cabling in there too. (I want to put an optical drive back in so I can automatically back discs up to images, so I picked up the RD1000 power cable. I think there's room to cram an SSD in behind the faceplate, above the drive bays.)

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If I just pull the PERC out of the system completely, will the system even see the drives or no?

I think the motherboard's onboard SAS controller can only see four physical drives, and only at SATA II speeds. I say flash your H710. If it accidentally bricks, you can pick up another one (or an H310 Mini Mono) off eBay for about the cost of shipping.

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_poweredge/poweredge-r720_reference-guide_en-us.pdf