SSDs on Dell PERC 6/i

[jesin]

I'm purchasing a Dell Poweredge R610 server for virtualization (KVM). The one I'm purchasing on eBay has a PERC 6/i controller. I'll be using Samsung 850 PRO SSDs on software RAID (mdadm).

I'm finding several of threads on Dell forums and Toms saying the controller has compatibility issues with SSDs and degrades performance.

Does this still hold true even with the latest firmware?
Should I get a separate controller to utilize the full performance of SSDs?

 

[popatim]

While there might be some compatibility issues with certain drives, the perc6 is a 3gb/s controller and just cannot run a 6gb/s ssd at the faster speed. They negotiate down to sata2 speed and top out at about 260MB/s. Thats what the main issue is - its a sata2 (3g) controller.

 

[jesin]

While there might be some compatibility issues with certain drives, the perc6 is a 3gb/s controller and just cannot run a 6gb/s ssd at the faster speed. They negotiate down to sata3 speed and top out at about 260MB/s. Thats what the main issue is - its a sata3 (3g) controller.

Thanks for the input popatim. I looked up for the Dell H700 which has SATA 3 but it seems that this controller works well only with "Dell certified" SSDs. Is it true even with the latest firmware?

 

[popatim]

Nope, Dell has since lifted the 'Dell branded drives only' limitation. You are free to use whatever drives you like but you will get a warning if they aren't Dell drives, which you can easily ignore.

 

[jesin]

I'm planning to get a LSI 9207-8i HBA card instead of venturing into Dell controllers. Thoughts?

 

[Ray_OIT]

While there might be some compatibility issues with certain drives, the perc6 is a 3gb/s controller and just cannot run a 6gb/s ssd at the faster speed. They negotiate down to sata3 speed and top out at about 260MB/s. Thats what the main issue is - its a sata3 (3g) controller.

Thanks for the input popatim. I looked up for the Dell H700 which has SATA 3 but it seems that this controller works well only with "Dell certified" SSDs. Is it true even with the latest firmware?

I'm doing exactly what you're trying to do. I replaced several SAS and Perc6i's on Dell R610 and R710's with H700 controllers. I'm running Samsung 850 Evo 500GB drives in Raid 1 and RAID 10 (depending on server).They've been working great for over 3 months. One bit of advice. Don't expose the drive directly to Windows 2012 or 2012 R2. It has some kind of bug with these drives that they will stop responding. You can unseat and reseat them. They will work for a another 24 hours before showing the same bug. Instead, put the drives in a RAID array (I tested 1, 0, 5 and 10) and expose the array to Windows. It runs fine. I also tested Ubuntu and CentOS on a non-raided 850 Evo and had zero problems. It's just a Windows thing. Good luck!