Dell Poweredge 1950 III (PE_SC3): replacement SAS controller to acceess drives >= 3TB

Fri Oct 14 00:48:39 UTC 2011

Hello Oliver,

Checking with the Dell website suggests that the only RAID cards they have
that supports 3TB drives with are the H200/H700/H800. See the following
for some point of reference:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/906/t/19309039.aspx

Dell also have a pretty decent document about using > 2TB drives...
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/HDD+Support+for+2.5TB,+3TB+Drives+and+B
eyond

Note that there seems to be some confusion as the standard BIOS (i.e. not
a EFI) using an MBR partition table will not recognise space beyond 2TB.
The above link suggests using the controller to create a "virtual logical
drive" that is small enough for the operating system to reside on and fits
inside the MBR partition table. Once the operating system has booted, it
can then recognise the GPT table on the larger than 2TB disks/virtual
logical drive.

In my mind, seeing as you have a Dell PowerEdge 1950III - I would suggest
you buy yourself a suitably sized USB flash key and install this on the
internal USB socket (specifically designed for booting operating systems).
Install the operating system on the flash key and use this to boot off.
Once the OS is booted, the machine should be able to understand GPT and
allow you access to your 3TB+ hard disks.
To me this seems less messy than setting up virtual logical drives and may
even allow you to use a cheaper SAS/SATA card.

I use this method (with an external USB memory key) to boot VMWare ESXi
4.1 on a Dell PowerEdge 840 - it works great.

This also allows you to do other funky things, like try new operating
system setups by simply replacing the USB flash key. New version of the OS
is no good? Plug the old memory key back in and reboot.

One caveat: I have never attempted to get FreeBSD to read a GPT... is it
supported yet??

Enjoy,

Gavin.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of O. Hartmann
Sent: Thursday, 13 October 2011 19:46
To: freebsd-questions at FreeBSD.ORG; freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
Subject: Dell Poweredge 1950 III (PE_SC3): replacement SAS controller to
acceess drives >= 3TB

Hello out there.

We run a Dell PowerEdge 950 III (PE_SC3) Server with FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE. 
This Server is equipted with a SAS controller, residing, as far as I 
could observe, on a PCIe slot.
Its kernel message is:

mpt0: <LSILogic SAS/SATA Adapter> port 0xec00-0xecff mem 
0xfc4fc000-0xfc4fffff,0xfc4e0000-0xfc4effff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
mpt0: [ITHREAD]
mpt0: MPI Version=1.5.14.0
mpt0: Capabilities: ( RAID-0 RAID-1E RAID-1 )
mpt0: 0 Active Volumes (2 Max)
mpt0: 0 Hidden Drive Members (14 Max)

The pciconf -lcv output is as:

mpt0 at pci0:1:0:0:        class=0x010000 card=0x1f101028 chip=0x00581000 
rev=0x08 hdr=0x00
     vendor     = 'LSI Logic (Was: Symbios Logic, NCR)'
     device     = 'SAS 3000 series, 8-port with 1068E -StorPort'
     class      = mass storage
     subclass   = SCSI
     cap 01[50] = powerspec 2  supports D0 D1 D2 D3  current D0
     cap 10[68] = PCI-Express 1 endpoint max data 256(4096) link x4(x8)
     cap 05[98] = MSI supports 1 message, 64 bit
     cap 11[b0] = MSI-X supports 1 message in map 0x14 enabled
ecap 0001[100] = AER 1 0 fatal 0 non-fatal 0 corrected

This controller obviously isn't capable of handling 3TB harddrives and I 
need it to be replaced - but I do not know what type and brand of 
controller is suitbale for the Dell PowerEdge III. We already contacted 
our support, but they rejected support, since the BIOS of this server 
isn't capable of booting off 3 TB harddrives due to the 32bit 
limitations. Well, I need the controller to attach 3 and 4 TB drives, we 
still boot off from legacy BIOS capable < 2,2 TB drives, so I see no 
issue to replace the SAS controller.

I'm a bit afraid of buying something "out of the blue" since the 
dimensions of this little controller board seems small. I hope someone 
already made a decission to buy such a replacement for their similar or 
exact the same system and can help me out.

We do not need RAID, nor SAS 2.0 capabilities, just JBOD. Thanks a lot 
in advance,

Oliver

P.S. Please also reply to my email, I'm not subsribing "questions" in 
case you reply. Thanks.

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