For compatibility and reliability, I would always recommend Enterprise HDD's and SSD's in your server. The Dell branded SSD's have significant price premium so it's certainly understandable to look for lower cost options.

xByte has worked with Edge Memory to have their Enterprise level drives perform correctly in Dell servers. At this point in time that is the only non-Dell branded drive drive we know to work well. They show green lights and do not generate errors in the LifeCycle controller or tools such as OpenManage (All non-Dell branded drives will be reported in tools like Dell's OpenManage as "non-genuine" and show a warning). The Edge drives will cost more than the Samsung EVO 850's, but xByte and Edge will stand behind their compatibility in your R720xd*.

We are in the process of testing some non-Dell branded Intel data center SSD's, but it will be at least a week before I have results for that testing. I have no plans to test a consumer grade SSD like the Samsung EVO 850.

*On the R720xd we have seen a backplane voltage issue when using more than 6 SSD's. The issue has appeared with Dell and non-Dell SSD's. It's an intermittent issue but can create a situation where the server will not power on. We often recommend the 16 bay R720 or 10 bay R620 for an all SSD solution. The newer R730xd does not seem to share this bug.

I can't speak for the 850's, but the SATA Edge SSD's we sell at xByte negotiate at 6Gbs and can be mixed with SAS. This works on both the H700 in the R610 and the H710 in the R620. The Edge drives will green light on the front panel but they do show up as non-Dell in open manage. While not supported by Dell, we sell these as a option to get the speed of SSD without the cost of Dell branded SSDs.

@BRRABill said:

@DustinB3403 I was looking at the enterprise-grade ones that xByte sells directly. Do all Edge SSDs work in the DELLs, or just the ones from xByte?

I don't know if Edge has incorporated the firmware changes into their entire line or not. I do know that there are some voltage issues on some models. We only sell the models that do not have the issue.

@BRRABill said in Dell PERC Question (Server Down):

I imagine they will also look at my drives when I send them back and try to figure out what went wrong.

The drives will indeed go back to Edge. They have updated their firmware based on other cases like this in the past.

@BRRABill
I'm coming late into this thread and I'm having problems discerning exactly what the issue is right now. Please contact your xByte rep Brad and he will get a support request going. Our techs can assist directly and can get Edge officially involved instead of trying to rely on ML posts.
--Todd

Basically the tech said that while he has never seen this exact issue, he has seen issues that are almost identical, and that they have a special model of the drive I have (I have the 3X) to fix these issues.

We(xByte) have not seen or tested the Edge 3X drives and before feeling comfortable with this solution we would need to fully test the drives in a variety of Dell servers and PERC controllers. In the interest of getting this fully resolved as soon as possible, we are going to replace the Edge drives with Dell branded Enterprise SSD's.

@BRRABill said in Dell PERC Question (Server Down):

@todd-at-xByte these were a new line of drives to begin with, right?

I think you just recently switched, right?

Not exactly. Edge rebranded the 960 Boost Pro Plus drives we were selling to E3 to consolidate their line. Edge stated that the 960 E3's were exactly the same as their 960 Boost Pro Plus.

@BRRABill said in Dell PERC Question (Server Down):

@todd-at-xByte these were a new line of drives to begin with, right?

I think you just recently switched, right?

Not exactly. Edge rebranded the 960 Boost Pro Plus drives we were selling to E3 to consolidate their line. Edge stated that the 960 E3's were exactly the same as their 960 Boost Pro Plus.

@BRRABill said in Dell PERC Question (Server Down):

I imagine they will also look at my drives when I send them back and try to figure out what went wrong.

The drives will indeed go back to Edge. They have updated their firmware based on other cases like this in the past.

Basically the tech said that while he has never seen this exact issue, he has seen issues that are almost identical, and that they have a special model of the drive I have (I have the 3X) to fix these issues.

We(xByte) have not seen or tested the Edge 3X drives and before feeling comfortable with this solution we would need to fully test the drives in a variety of Dell servers and PERC controllers. In the interest of getting this fully resolved as soon as possible, we are going to replace the Edge drives with Dell branded Enterprise SSD's.

@BRRABill
I'm coming late into this thread and I'm having problems discerning exactly what the issue is right now. Please contact your xByte rep Brad and he will get a support request going. Our techs can assist directly and can get Edge officially involved instead of trying to rely on ML posts.
--Todd

I'm having trouble finding official Dell documentation, but it's my understanding that the SD card reader option is only supported for ESXi. I would strongly recommend for a production server that you stick with the traditional method of creating a small partition on the RAID volume.

@BRRABill said:

@DustinB3403 I was looking at the enterprise-grade ones that xByte sells directly. Do all Edge SSDs work in the DELLs, or just the ones from xByte?

I don't know if Edge has incorporated the firmware changes into their entire line or not. I do know that there are some voltage issues on some models. We only sell the models that do not have the issue.

For compatibility and reliability, I would always recommend Enterprise HDD's and SSD's in your server. The Dell branded SSD's have significant price premium so it's certainly understandable to look for lower cost options.

xByte has worked with Edge Memory to have their Enterprise level drives perform correctly in Dell servers. At this point in time that is the only non-Dell branded drive drive we know to work well. They show green lights and do not generate errors in the LifeCycle controller or tools such as OpenManage (All non-Dell branded drives will be reported in tools like Dell's OpenManage as "non-genuine" and show a warning). The Edge drives will cost more than the Samsung EVO 850's, but xByte and Edge will stand behind their compatibility in your R720xd*.

We are in the process of testing some non-Dell branded Intel data center SSD's, but it will be at least a week before I have results for that testing. I have no plans to test a consumer grade SSD like the Samsung EVO 850.

*On the R720xd we have seen a backplane voltage issue when using more than 6 SSD's. The issue has appeared with Dell and non-Dell SSD's. It's an intermittent issue but can create a situation where the server will not power on. We often recommend the 16 bay R720 or 10 bay R620 for an all SSD solution. The newer R730xd does not seem to share this bug.

I can't speak for the 850's, but the SATA Edge SSD's we sell at xByte negotiate at 6Gbs and can be mixed with SAS. This works on both the H700 in the R610 and the H710 in the R620. The Edge drives will green light on the front panel but they do show up as non-Dell in open manage. While not supported by Dell, we sell these as a option to get the speed of SSD without the cost of Dell branded SSDs.