Perc 6i vs. Perc H700 Raid Controllers

[Tom V]

Hi,

We have an R710 server with RAID 1 configuration. Went to add 6 more hard drives recently and then went to configure RAID 5, but it wouldn't let us. There's a SAS6 controller in there and it won't allow us to configure RAID5. Contacted our Dell rep and he said we would need a PERC H700 controller. He sent a quote and it was $515.00! Got a quote from a re-seller and they want to sell us a Perc 6i. This only costs $75.00! So, my question is, anyone know what the difference is between the 2 and will either get us where we want to go ( RAID 5 ). Thanks in advance!

Tom

 

[marbus90]

Hardware RAID doesn't have anything to do with FreeNAS... but the Perc 6i is old junk where the H700 is a brand new proper controller for a raid6 configuration.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I would tell you to get an M1015. But it didn't work in my Dell. If you are using FreeNAS on top of raid, odds are you are gonna get punked.

 

[sactobob]

A little late... Been getting H700s on used market for $100 from Deep Discount Servers(they are all over ebay). They don't warranty the battery, so you might end up needing to purchase a new one for peace-of-mind for around $50.

I have a Dell R610 with the H700 testing FreeNAS currently. H700 doesn't support JBOD, but creating 6 separate Raid 0 VHDs (R610 has 6xhot swaps) essentially does the same and they show up using mfiutil as:

[root@freenas1] ~# mfiutil show drives
mfi0 Physical Drives:
0 ( 279G) ONLINE <FUJITSU MBD2300RC D80A serial=D004PA6035TJ> SAS E1:S0
1 ( 279G) ONLINE <FUJITSU MBD2300RC D80A serial=D004PA602R4N> SAS E1:S1
2 ( 279G) ONLINE <FUJITSU MBD2300RC D80A serial=D004PA602PT0> SAS E1:S2
3 ( 279G) ONLINE <FUJITSU MBD2300RC D80A serial=D004PA7036UP> SAS E1:S3
4 ( 279G) ONLINE <FUJITSU MBD2300RC D80A serial=D004PA6036KJ> SAS E1:S4
5 ( 279G) ONLINE <FUJITSU MBD2300RC D80A serial=D004PA6036MM> SAS E1:S5
[root@freenas1] ~# mfiutil show volumes
mfi0 Volumes:
Id Size Level Stripe State Cache Name
mfid0 ( 278G) RAID-0 64k OPTIMAL Writes
mfid1 ( 278G) RAID-0 64k OPTIMAL Writes
mfid2 ( 278G) RAID-0 64k OPTIMAL Writes
mfid3 ( 278G) RAID-0 64k OPTIMAL Writes
mfid4 ( 278G) RAID-0 64k OPTIMAL Writes
mfid5 ( 278G) RAID-0 64k OPTIMAL Writes

Also at first I read swapping drives in/out required a reboot into controller BIOS, but I've been able to control that as well using mfiutil.

 

[HoneyBadger]

H700 doesn't support JBOD, but creating 6 separate Raid 0 VHDs (R610 has 6xhot swaps) essentially does the same

No, no, no, no.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

If the controller you want to use is an Adaptec, Dell Perc, Highpoint, or some no-name brand you shouldn't even try to use them. All of these may or may not "work" but you'll find out later they don't properly handle SMART monitoring, SMART testing, passing of errors from the disk to the system, etc. Don't put your data at risk and go with *any* of these brands. You can thank us for saving your data later.

If you are using a Dell Perc and think that when we say "JBOD" we mean RAID0 of single disks, you are in error. JBOD is not the same as a RAID0 of a single disk, and you are making a grave error by thinking otherwise.

 

[sactobob]

This is just a test throw around server and thought I'd try and it is 'working' at least to the point that there is a Z2 array. Thank you for pointing that tidbit out.
What is the controller recommended then to put in the Dell? Deep Discount Server suggested a H200, but I think that is a 3GBs Sata/sas controller.

My other Dells are using the H700 in normal RAID mode and are ESXI servers, which work great for that.. Was hoping to re-purpose one of them as 'last ditch' backup running FreeNas. It's too bad Dell makes a nice controller and leaves JBOD out expecting you to actually use it as a RAID controler. lol

 

[sactobob]

Do not obsess over SATA3. You do not need SATA3 ports, except to get the most out of a SSD. The average hard drive these days can read at about 150MBytes/sec. 3Gbit/s SATA2 works out to something like 375MBytes/sec.

BTW, I did see this above, the box I'm building will be for 6 SSDs when all is done... Another box that will be all 2TB drives x 12 for mostly backup/redundancy is what Deep Server Discount recommended the H200 instead of H700. That's fine then I'm guessing. Probably the H200 for this Dell is also no big deal, the limitation will still be the 4xgb Nics anyways. I think I'll have them send me an H200 and then I'll have a spare H700 for my ESXI farm.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Fair enough, but the RAID0 configuration can also hurt performance due to odd behavior on cache flushing.

The H200 is actually a good controller; it's 6Gbps and behaves as a pure HBA if you don't configure any virtual drives. Just ensure that you update to the P16 firmware from the Dell site or you'll get an error from FreeNAS about a mismatched mpt driver.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...oweredge-rc-h200/drivers?rvps=y&ref=3085title

 

[sactobob]

Perfect! Thanks for that info, was in the process of researching H200 and reading other forum posts first before heading off to Dell's website. Much appreciated.

 

[sactobob]

Oh and even better, H200 confirmed with R610 from this guys post.. And only around $75 from multiple ebay vendors... Woot.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/906/t/19514656

The data cable for the H200 and H700 are the same so you can reuse that cable.

The main difference I see is no battery/cache, which FreeNas basically takes care of anyways internally using as much ECC memory that it can, right? So basically just have to swap the controllers out and I'm good... :)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

The main difference I see is no battery/cache, which FreeNas basically takes care of anyways internally using as much ECC memory that it can, right?

Cache -> ZFS ARC
Battery -> UPS