Is anyone using using this for raid 5? When you start looking at (3) 80 Gb drives it makes pricing much more attractive than (3)72 Gb 10K SCSI's. Not only that, but future storage additions should be less expensive. I was just wondering if anyone has any nightmare. BTW, the system would probably running RH linux if that makes a difference.
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CERC SATA controller
- Thread starter smah
- Start date
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- #3
I'll be glad to hear it. When I posted, one of the machines I was looking at was a PE1800. Everything else being the same, the price difference between the PERC4 w/ (3) 73GB SCSI's and CERC w/(3) 80GB SATA's on the PE1800 amounts to about $1250. For your config, it must have been at least $3K different. For a simple file server that I need, I think it will be good enough. What OS will you be using? At least I won't be the guinea pig ![[wink]](/data/assets/smilies/wink.gif "[wink] [wink]")
.
Thanks,
Steve
.Thanks,
Steve
And after a short delay, here is the reply
Problem 1) The CERC Kit does not come with the SATA cables. Dell Customer services hadn't got a clue what should be in the kit. However they are standard ones but need to be 45cm long so we got then elsewhere.
Other than that it works fine. Booted off Dell Server assistant CD and it found the CERC controller and asked us how we wanted it configured - I said 6 x disks in RAID5 and it was ready for use to install Windows 2003 SBS straight away.
Once Windows was installed I downloaded and installed Dell Array manager - this reported Array was still re-syncing. A few hours later Array reported as ready and there have been no problems so far.
Seems as fast as a SCSI hardware RAID array in normal use - feels much faster than a similar server with twin software mirrored 10K SCSI drives
Hope this helps
Regards
David
Problem 1) The CERC Kit does not come with the SATA cables. Dell Customer services hadn't got a clue what should be in the kit. However they are standard ones but need to be 45cm long so we got then elsewhere.
Other than that it works fine. Booted off Dell Server assistant CD and it found the CERC controller and asked us how we wanted it configured - I said 6 x disks in RAID5 and it was ready for use to install Windows 2003 SBS straight away.
Once Windows was installed I downloaded and installed Dell Array manager - this reported Array was still re-syncing. A few hours later Array reported as ready and there have been no problems so far.
Seems as fast as a SCSI hardware RAID array in normal use - feels much faster than a similar server with twin software mirrored 10K SCSI drives
Hope this helps
Regards
David
- Thread starter
- #5
- Thread starter
- #6
I have a quick question. I have this server as well. It will be set up in raid10 with 4 160GB drives. I am moving away from tape as a backup and wondered if the cerc controller allows hot-swap removable drives. If so, I am planning on getting other sata drives to put in place of tape. Any thoughts? Thanks.
- Thread starter
- #8
I did some research on that and - No, Dell says they are not hot swappable. There's also something on the PE mailing lists about there Dell not willing to invest in hot swap backplanes & trays, so don't expect it any time soon. And it looks like they'd be a pain to get out of that cage in the factory configuration.
Thanks. My thought was to use an empty 5.25 bay to mount a rack that will accept the drive in a tray. Yeah, i anticipated there being issues with using the cage. I have seen several vendors that have swap software that you can use to be able to use either SATA or IDE drives in a removable drive scenerio. Kingwin, Startech, and Avantec are the three I know of. I assume that IDE would be the best option and using the interface on the board instead of plugging into the CERC controller. That would leave expansion in that cage for the future and also to be able to use larger IDE drives for cheaper removable backup.
Quick update on our 6 x 160G RAID5 using the CERC controller.
Server has started beeping and RAID array is showing as degraded.
Spoke to Dell and they wanted the controller logs emailed over. Did this and they have decided one disk in the array has physically failed with bad blocks and are sending an engineer to replace. They reckon the array will automatically rebuild when the server is rebooted after the disk is replaced. Fingers crossed!
We seem to be getting quite a few disks fails these days - all makes, all types. Make sure your backups are working
Regards
David
Server has started beeping and RAID array is showing as degraded.
Spoke to Dell and they wanted the controller logs emailed over. Did this and they have decided one disk in the array has physically failed with bad blocks and are sending an engineer to replace. They reckon the array will automatically rebuild when the server is rebooted after the disk is replaced. Fingers crossed!
We seem to be getting quite a few disks fails these days - all makes, all types. Make sure your backups are working
Regards
David
- Thread starter
- #11
Hi Smah,
A bit of a nightmare - my comment about backups was VERY valid
Dell came out and replaced drive and rebooted - no RAID array at all. They decided that a 2nd drive and a SATA cable had also failed between them taking the running server down and it being rebooted:-( Hm..............
They fitted a total of two drives (original were Maxtor, new are Western Digital) and a SATA cable set and left us with a rebuilding array and no Windows!
We had to restore the whole lot from tape - took Dell 2.5 days to fix the server and a day for us to restore it.
We have also just done another PE1800 with the 6 way CERC. 2 x 80G mirror on the internal SATA and 3 x 80G RAID5 on the 6 way one.
Regards
David
A bit of a nightmare - my comment about backups was VERY valid
Dell came out and replaced drive and rebooted - no RAID array at all. They decided that a 2nd drive and a SATA cable had also failed between them taking the running server down and it being rebooted:-( Hm..............
They fitted a total of two drives (original were Maxtor, new are Western Digital) and a SATA cable set and left us with a rebuilding array and no Windows!
We had to restore the whole lot from tape - took Dell 2.5 days to fix the server and a day for us to restore it.
We have also just done another PE1800 with the 6 way CERC. 2 x 80G mirror on the internal SATA and 3 x 80G RAID5 on the 6 way one.
Regards
David
- Thread starter
- #13
Just FYI if anyone interested. I got that removable drive tray idea to work for backups. I switched the 4 160 gb drives to 6 36 gb raptors in raid 10 and put the 160s in the removable tray. I added a sata pci card because it appears you can't use the onboard with a card. Anyway, I have been getting around 900 MB per minute on the backups using veritas 10 doing brick level. The 160s are removed each morning and have caused no problems since put into service (2 weeks).
Bit more of an update FYI.
We have sent 4 x PE1800's to clients with SATA drives this year.
One has now had 3 drives out of 6 replaced and has been down twice.
One has just had it's first drive on a system mirror fail and this has crashed the server and Windows will not complete a boot - so much for redundant disk arrays.
Two are running fine - but one was only delivered last week:-(
All failed disks are Maxtor 80G (1) or 160G (3)
If you have the cash, stick with SCSI disks!!!!
David
We have sent 4 x PE1800's to clients with SATA drives this year.
One has now had 3 drives out of 6 replaced and has been down twice.
One has just had it's first drive on a system mirror fail and this has crashed the server and Windows will not complete a boot - so much for redundant disk arrays.
Two are running fine - but one was only delivered last week:-(
All failed disks are Maxtor 80G (1) or 160G (3)
If you have the cash, stick with SCSI disks!!!!
David
- Thread starter
- #18
Arrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhh!,
Another disk has failed - this time the SATA0 mirror in the embedded controller on the server that SATA1 failed on last month.
Again it caused Windows 2003 to crash - this time corrupting Exchange Databases and the registry. Server Blue screened on reboot until we disconnected SATA0.
Both drives on the server are now Seagate - see if it lasts any longer!!
Regards
David
Another disk has failed - this time the SATA0 mirror in the embedded controller on the server that SATA1 failed on last month.
Again it caused Windows 2003 to crash - this time corrupting Exchange Databases and the registry. Server Blue screened on reboot until we disconnected SATA0.
Both drives on the server are now Seagate - see if it lasts any longer!!
Regards
David
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