Dell T320 Fileserver best RAID setup

[daleos]

I'm new at all this advanced RAID setup business so please be gentle.

We've ordered a Dell T320 with Perc h710 RAID card, with 8bay hotswap, 2x 300GB SAS drives and 4x4TB SAS drives. It'll be running Windows 2012 R2 as a simple fileserver. (It's for a design house dealing with 3d/video/animation if you want to know why they need so much space). Storage capacity is more important than performance but we're trying to get a happy medium where possible.

The plan was that the 2x300GB drives would for the OS, be configured as RAID1 with the drives mounted internally. The 4x4TB drives were to be configured as RAID5 in the hotswap bays, leaving 4x hotbay drives empty for when the inevitable happens and we need to expand the disk capacity.

I had actually ordered this with the requirement that the 2x 300GB drives were to be mounted internally, not in the Hotswap bay but on arrival the machine arrived with them installed in the hotswap bay, taking away two potential slots for more 4TB drives. A call to Dell said that it's not possible to mount the two system drives internally at the same time as the 8x Hotswap system.

My first question that the DELL rep never successfully answered to me was why is this the case?

Can't the PERC h710 card deal with both scenarios at the same time? If not, doesn't the motherboard have rudimentary RAID onboard and if not, could I not just add another RAID card to the system and run it that way?

Do I have any other options here before I resort to plan B which is to discard the two 300GB drives and install the OS on the 4x4TB disk array?

Which brings me to Part 2 of the question. Assuming I have to put the OS on the Disk Array with all the 4TB drives, can I set up a virtual drive/partition for the OS *AND* still be able to utilise the 'Online Capacity Expansion' [OCE] so that when it comes to needing more drives, I can just stick some more in?

I'm quite keen to try and keep the OS side of thing separate from the data for my own OCD reasons more than anything else but are there any technical reasons this is a bad idea?

So a brief recap...

Plan A: My preferred Solution.
2x300GB drives RAID 1 for OS, mounted internally.
4x4TB drives RAID5 = 12TB
Expansion potential: another 16TB via OCE
Total data capacity: 28TB

Plan B
4x4TB drives RAID5 = 12TB (300GB partition for OS / rest for data),
Expansion Potential: 12TB in second 4x4TB RAID5 array as OCE might won't work
Total data capacity: 24TB-300GB

Plan C
4x4TB drives RAID5 = 12TB (OS installed in main virtual drive),
Expansion potential: another 16TB via OCE
Total data capacity 28TB - OS overhead.

Plan D (default Dell setup)
2x300GB drives taking up two Hotswap bays
4x4TB drives RAID5 = 12TB
Expansion potential: another 2x4TB (8TB) via OCE
Total data capacity: 20TB

Have I missed something important?
Is plan A possible and if so how do I go about it?
If not, could I have some pros and cons advice of doing any of the other options.
Any other ways around this?
Are there any tricks/gotchas that Windows 2012 might bring to the table?

 

[drtweak]

Here is the thing about having the internally mounted drives and the hotswap bays. You can't have both. Why? Because the Dell servers are designed to have either or not both. When you add in the Hot Swap Module it takes the pace of where the drives would be mounted internally. Can't have both.

T320 Case WITH Internal Drives

http://photos.pcpro.co.uk/images/front_picture_library_PC_Pro/dir_392/it_photo_196141_52.jpg

T320 Case With Hot Swap Drives

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/N9EaACxqf_M/maxresdefault.jpg

Even though that pic is the Hot Swap for 2.5 inch drives it still takes up the SAME SPACE.

Now the RAID card on the H710 has two Mini SFF8088 connectors and I don't know if it uses both of them to connect all 8 drives on the Hot Swap Bays BUT if it doesn't you COULD mouth the two 300 GB's using 5.25 to 3.5 adapters and put them in the space above the hot swap drive since there are 3 5.25 inch bay drives (Assuming you have only one DVD Drive) and then by a seperate SFF8088 to SAS adapter and connect them.

If the H710 uses both already then you can still mount them in the space place but get a second RAID Card (Can be something like a H310 or something since its just a RAID 1) If they weren't SAS drives I'd say just use the onboard SATA and do a RAID though that but they are SAS.

This way you can keep your 300 GB internal and then have all 8 slots for the hard drives.

I know the newer rack servers like the R730xD and what not have two 2.5 inch drives in the back of the server designed for the OS and then you have all 12 or 24 hot swap drives in the front for storage.

Hope this helps! If you need anything else just ask. My Boss is a Dell Certified Reseller so we sell dell servers quite often. Been a while since we sold a T320 though. Almost 2 years. Never sold one with a Hot Swap drives though only internal. Just the Rack and the 2 T610's we sold a few years back did but in the end they are all the same.

 

[daleos]

Here is the thing about having the internally mounted drives and the hotswap bays. You can't have both. Why? Because the Dell servers are designed to have either or not both. When you add in the Hot Swap Module it takes the pace of where the drives would be mounted internally. Can't have both.

T320 Case WITH Internal Drives

http://photos.pcpro.co.uk/images/front_picture_library_PC_Pro/dir_392/it_photo_196141_52.jpg

T320 Case With Hot Swap Drives

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/N9EaACxqf_M/maxresdefault.jpg

Even though that pic is the Hot Swap for 2.5 inch drives it still takes up the SAME SPACE.

Now the RAID card on the H710 has two Mini SFF8088 connectors and I don't know if it uses both of them to connect all 8 drives on the Hot Swap Bays BUT if it doesn't you COULD mouth the two 300 GB's using 5.25 to 3.5 adapters and put them in the space above the hot swap drive since there are 3 5.25 inch bay drives (Assuming you have only one DVD Drive) and then by a seperate SFF8088 to SAS adapter and connect them.

If the H710 uses both already then you can still mount them in the space place but get a second RAID Card (Can be something like a H310 or something since its just a RAID 1) If they weren't SAS drives I'd say just use the onboard SATA and do a RAID though that but they are SAS.

This way you can keep your 300 GB internal and then have all 8 slots for the hard drives.

I know the newer rack servers like the R730xD and what not have two 2.5 inch drives in the back of the server designed for the OS and then you have all 12 or 24 hot swap drives in the front for storage.

Hope this helps! If you need anything else just ask. My Boss is a Dell Certified Reseller so we sell dell servers quite often. Been a while since we sold a T320 though. Almost 2 years. Never sold one with a Hot Swap drives though only internal. Just the Rack and the 2 T610's we sold a few years back did but in the end they are all the same.

Well the main reason for the T320 was that it's a tower (no room for a rack), pretty quiet (it's in the same room as everyone else) and my budget was £1500 for everything. The T420 was a consideration but in the end, we don't really need the processing power.

The thing is, I had already checked out the internals from another T420 (which has the same chassis/mb but I believe has 2x processor slots instead of the 1x for the T320.) so I knew about the free 5.25" dive slots and that's where I got the original idea from so everything you've said there backs up my initial plan. I was shocked that Dell were so adamant it could not be done. Maybe I should have insisted on speaking to a tech guy instead of a sales guy (although he was 2nd line sales, not 1st because I confused the hell out of the first guy).

What is really good to find out is that a second SAS RAID card is an option. The H710 installed doesn't look like there are any ports free. I may have an R310 going spare from an upgrade I did with another company. Will that be any good?

To be honest, if all else fails I'd be happy to do Motherboard SATA for the OS and may just ditch the SAS for the equivalent SATA.

 

[drtweak]

Here is the thing about having the internally mounted drives and the hotswap bays. You can't have both. Why? Because the Dell servers are designed to have either or not both. When you add in the Hot Swap Module it takes the pace of where the drives would be mounted internally. Can't have both.

T320 Case WITH Internal Drives

http://photos.pcpro.co.uk/images/front_picture_library_PC_Pro/dir_392/it_photo_196141_52.jpg

T320 Case With Hot Swap Drives

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/N9EaACxqf_M/maxresdefault.jpg

Even though that pic is the Hot Swap for 2.5 inch drives it still takes up the SAME SPACE.

Now the RAID card on the H710 has two Mini SFF8088 connectors and I don't know if it uses both of them to connect all 8 drives on the Hot Swap Bays BUT if it doesn't you COULD mouth the two 300 GB's using 5.25 to 3.5 adapters and put them in the space above the hot swap drive since there are 3 5.25 inch bay drives (Assuming you have only one DVD Drive) and then by a seperate SFF8088 to SAS adapter and connect them.

If the H710 uses both already then you can still mount them in the space place but get a second RAID Card (Can be something like a H310 or something since its just a RAID 1) If they weren't SAS drives I'd say just use the onboard SATA and do a RAID though that but they are SAS.

This way you can keep your 300 GB internal and then have all 8 slots for the hard drives.

I know the newer rack servers like the R730xD and what not have two 2.5 inch drives in the back of the server designed for the OS and then you have all 12 or 24 hot swap drives in the front for storage.

Hope this helps! If you need anything else just ask. My Boss is a Dell Certified Reseller so we sell dell servers quite often. Been a while since we sold a T320 though. Almost 2 years. Never sold one with a Hot Swap drives though only internal. Just the Rack and the 2 T610's we sold a few years back did but in the end they are all the same.

Well the main reason for the T320 was that it's a tower (no room for a rack), pretty quiet (it's in the same room as everyone else) and my budget was £1500 for everything. The T420 was a consideration but in the end, we don't really need the processing power.

The thing is, I had already checked out the internals from another T420 (which has the same chassis/mb but I believe has 2x processor slots instead of the 1x for the T320.) so I knew about the free 5.25" dive slots and that's where I got the original idea from so everything you've said there backs up my initial plan. I was shocked that Dell were so adamant it could not be done. Maybe I should have insisted on speaking to a tech guy instead of a sales guy (although he was 2nd line sales, not 1st because I confused the hell out of the first guy).

What is really good to find out is that a second SAS RAID card is an option. The H710 installed doesn't look like there are any ports free. I may have an R310 going spare from an upgrade I did with another company. Will that be any good?

To be honest, if all else fails I'd be happy to do Motherboard SATA for the OS and may just ditch the SAS for the equivalent SATA.

yea the T420 is another beast of a machine. Pretty much the same as the T320 just with 2 CPU's (Currently taking a bunch of dell certifications and they CRAM in the whole number system for dells) but they use the same chassis.

But here is the thing. Dell does NOT see those two extra 5.25 ports as places to put hard drives. They just don't see it that way. A sales guy just knows sales and the configurations that they offer not what CAN be done. You need more of an Open Minded Tech to pick his mind with that.

So here is the thing about the R310 though. The Rack servers use a slightly different version of the PERC Cards (At least on the R320's and R720s/730's I've dealt with. They still use a PCIe 8x slot but they don't go in a Riser. They go close to the drives. The R310 I don't know if its the same way. If its a standard add-on card with a bracket go for it. You can use two RAID cards. Shit you can fill up ALL the PCIe Slots with RAID cards. Just the server will take that much longer to boot with each one. Even if its not a Bracket RAID Card it will still work but you will have nothing holding it up and it can break or fall out. Others are a daughter board like so

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDgwWDY0MA==/z/NzsAAMXQeKNTPk1E/$_35.JPG

But you can also swap those out for SATA drives. They do have on-board RAID though Intel (or the should. May want to double check on that one). Now another thing you can vs a 3.5 to a 5.25 mount adapter is get like a Hot Swap Caddy like so

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817997016

or similar. This way the hard drives will get some air cooled over them since they won't be in the airway path that is setup in the server itself.

Hope this helps!

 

[daleos]

Ok, I was waiting until I got the system all up and running smoothly before I commented on the results but in the end I just bought an H310 PCIe card, some assorted cable splitters and a couple of 3.5-5.25" bay adapters and it all just worked. I had to RAID 10 the big drives as RAID 5 was too scary and RAID 6 too slow but at least I now know that Dell Sales really are not the people to ask for anything out of the ordinary.

 

[drtweak]

Hahahaha yea I won't like they aren't! We are Resellers for dell so we have our own sales Rep we can talk to. Also out login portal for buying stuff is different than a normal consumer. We can customize it a lot more than normal people.

the H310 is a good entry level card. It doesn't have a Battery backup which is fine with running a RAID 10 (RAID 5 and 6 would benifit from it) but its a good card, can hold up to 8 SAS/SATA drives which is a lot but the T310 should be able to hold all 8. I know if it had Hot Swap it should.

But glad everything is working good!

 

[daleos]

Hahahaha yea I won't like they aren't! We are Resellers for dell so we have our own sales Rep we can talk to. Also out login portal for buying stuff is different than a normal consumer. We can customize it a lot more than normal people.

the H310 is a good entry level card. It doesn't have a Battery backup which is fine with running a RAID 10 (RAID 5 and 6 would benifit from it) but its a good card, can hold up to 8 SAS/SATA drives which is a lot but the T310 should be able to hold all 8. I know if it had Hot Swap it should.

But glad everything is working good!

The H310 was just for the RAID 1 2x 300GB OS mirror. We're using the H710 for the 4x 4TB RAID 10 array. That leaves us with 4 hotswap bays to grow the data into. As the OS array is off the h710 already, it'll be just a case of adding more drives when the time comes. It'll literally be just pop 'em in and a 5min fiddle to set up the RAID array.

Technically, we could add two more drives to the h310 but we really are out of internal space now and I'm not sure it's wise to use so many power splitters off the remaining power outlets.

 

[drtweak]

Well it all depends on the total wattage of the PSU. Pretty sure those guys some with like 750 watt Redundant power supplies which is a LOT of power. If you aren't sure you can always get one of those Kill-a-Watt power monitors and plug it between the wall and PC and check how much wattage you really are using.

Also two things.

1) Install Dell Open Manage here if you haven't already (Should also be on the OEM Preinstall disk that comes with the server)

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=CWHRG&osCode=LHS64&fileId=3267736217

So that you can manage all the hardware/software alerts on the server

2) Download and install the LSI MegaRaid Store Manager here

http://www.lsi.com/Pages/user/eula.aspx?file=http%3a%2f%2fwww.lsi.com%2fdownloads%2fPublic%2fRAID%2520Controllers%2fRAID%2520Controllers%2520Common%2520Files%2f14.11.01.00_Windows_MSM.zip&Source=http%3a%2f%2fwww.lsi.com%2fproducts%2fraid-controllers%2fpages%2fmegaraid-sas-9260-8i.aspx

The PERC Cards are Based off of LSI Chipsets so it will work. This will allow you to monitor, create, and delete Volumes on the RAID card without having to restart and enter the RAID BIOS. Just toss them in, start up MegaRaid, and you can Create and add a new RAID. Not sure about expanding a RAID, but it does come in very hand and I install it on all our Clients Dell PERC/LSI based RAID Cards.

 

[daleos]

I think I bought the 750W version of the dual PSU anyway. Will have to double check on that one.

Open manage already installed but it doesn't look as comprehensive as some I've used before. I might need to look for a better version.

Many thanks for the LSI MegaRAID Store Mananger tip. That will come in handy on a lot more boxes than this one.

We're going the RAID10 route as it's way faster than the other options and easier to fix if something goes wrong. Unfortunately, this means there's a whole lot of reconfiguration options (like expanding arrays) that aren't available to me but I'm sure Store Manager will really come in handy when the inevitable drive failure occurs.

 

[drtweak]

Yea the MegaRAID has saved me quite a few times from Rebooting a server that I can't reboot. and yea Open Manage only does so much. You can look at the drive, see that they are ok or failed, but you can't do anything with the RAID.

Not sure how well these newer RAID cards deal with hard drive failure (Haven't had a server with a SATA/SAS Drive die yet (Just goes to show an Enterprise class drive does last) but on some of the older PERC 3/4 servers (That have old school SCSI and not Serial Attached SCSI) I would be able to take a failed drive out, toss in a new drive in its place, back nothing else i have to do. I just walk away. I will have to test that on one of these servers i got laying around here.