Examining the Dell PERC H310 Controller

scottalanmiller

Is it proven (questioning the theory, not you) that is really a concern with SSDs? Especially server grade SSDs?

That writes wear them out? Yes, it is very well established that writes are the only significant reliability concern to SSDs. Shock, temperature, operating duration, read frequency all have effectively zero effect on them. Writes alone cause them measurable wear.

scottalanmiller

The risk is far lower than people like to make it out to be and enterprise drives are much better than non-enterprise drives, but normally drives do not take direct writes in any serious server situation. Having enterprise drives without a cache in front of them is an odd pairing and not something that we would ever expect to see in an enterprise scenario. RAID array cache is one of the most significant features looked for in servers. 1GB of cache is normally a minimum today.

Add to that parity write expansion and you might have a lot more writes than is normally expected.

BRRABill

So it sounds like my options are...

(I only have the H310 in hand)

keep the H310, and get 10K SAS DELL drives
buy a H710, throw the H310 away (or maybe eBay), and go with the EDGE SSDs

WWSD?

scottalanmiller

To say that those are the only options is a bit extreme. But it is true that spending money on fast drives with an H310 controller doesn't make sense. H310 is cheap for people cutting all possible corners, even 10K SAS drives does not match. With an H310 we would expect NL-SAS (aka 7200 RPM SAS) at maximum and SATA drives more likely.

BRRABill

I contacted xByte to see if they would have any interest in swapping out my H310 for a H710.

If not, it's a sub $200 loss.

BRRABill

Mint is up on the DELL T320 with PERC H310.

Let me know what you'd like to see.

scottalanmiller

Let's start with ...

sudo fdisk -l

BRRABill

Disk /dev/sda: 499.6 GB, 499558383616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60734 cylinders, total 975699968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x23492907

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 718847 358400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 718848 245759999 122520576 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

BRRABill

There are 2 500GB SATA drives hooked into this H310 in a RAID1 array.

Server 2012 is currently installed on them.

But I can blow it away if needed.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

There are 2 500GB SATA drives hooked into this H310 in a RAID1 array.

Server 2012 is currently installed on them.

But I can blow it away if needed.

They are in RAID 1?

BRRABill

BRRABill

That the config screen during POST.

scottalanmiller

Cool, thanks.

BRRABill

Let me know what you want next, Guv'na!

BRRABill

What? No more testing? Are we that MEH about this controller?

BRRABill

Well, over the holiday I ordered a new H710 PERC controller for this new server of mine, that is still sitting dormant, waiting for Server 2016.

So the H310 will be going on eBay sooner than later.

Does anyone want to see any sort of performance numbers or anything else while I have it to play with?

Also ... is CrystalDisk in Windows a good disk speed test?

travisdh1

@BRRABill said:

Well, over the holiday I ordered a new H710 PERC controller for this new server of mine, that is still sitting dormant, waiting for Server 2016.

So the H310 will be going on eBay sooner than later.

Does anyone want to see any sort of performance numbers or anything else while I have it to play with?

Also ... is CrystalDisk in Windows a good disk speed test?

Can that H310 act as an HBA? Just present the drives to the system? Would make Linux/UNIX style software raid viable maybe.

scottalanmiller

@travisdh1 said in Examining the Dell PERC H310 Controller:

@BRRABill said:

Well, over the holiday I ordered a new H710 PERC controller for this new server of mine, that is still sitting dormant, waiting for Server 2016.

So the H310 will be going on eBay sooner than later.

Does anyone want to see any sort of performance numbers or anything else while I have it to play with?

Also ... is CrystalDisk in Windows a good disk speed test?

Can that H310 act as an HBA? Just present the drives to the system? Would make Linux/UNIX style software raid viable maybe.

Typically the answer is... sort of. It makes RAID 0 out of each and presents that, not the drives themselves.

scottalanmiller

I think we are still up in the air as to whether this is FakeRAID or not.

manxam

@scottalanmiller , the H200, H310 and IBM M1015 using the same chipsets are real raid controllers just without caching or BBU. They're entry level devices meant for entry-level servers but are widely sought after for those running software "raid" (i.e. BTRFS, ZFS, and mdadm) due to their ability to be used in IT mode.

I have created Raid 5, 6, and 10 arrays on these units and imported them successfully on other, more feature complete, controllers such as the H710 and P420.