9261-8i with BBU and Cables, 156 shipped, good deal?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
78
28
33
Yeah I think I am going to go for the H700 with the 1GB cache. How do you guys mount the BBUs in non-Dell cases?

Also, what kind of management interface do you get with the Dell cards aside from the pre-boot BIOS environment? Any web tools or CLI tools?
 

NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
596
133
43
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Double sided Velcro tape to the chassis.

The 1GB providing CacheVault is certainly a reason to prefer the H700 if you can get it.

Mine are all in ESXi hosts so I only use the pre-boot BIOS myself.
 

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
1,122
125
63
34
deslok.dyndns.org
Mine is a windows host I just use the LSI megaraid it can tell it's a dell card but since it's a 2xxx chip it just shows up as normal it works on my current 6/i and our lenovo 720ix on that note
 

Attachments

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
78
28
33
Cool, I wasn't sure if the MegaRAID manager would be able to detect it or not. I haven't decided if I'll be using FreeNAS or Server 2012 with StarWind's Virtual SAN but that controller manager looks pretty sweet, way better than the 3ware web management interface.
 

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
1,122
125
63
34
deslok.dyndns.org
I tried using the StarWind Virtual san on 2012 and wasn't really impressed with it, what are you going to be doing that it would help you?
 

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
78
28
33
I got that H700 with 1GB cache linked earlier for 175, there weren't any other 1GB models from NA sellers for a price that good so I bit on it.
 

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
78
28
33
I tried using the StarWind Virtual san on 2012 and wasn't really impressed with it, what are you going to be doing that it would help you?
Well, i'll admit the interface for it is garbage and confusing. But, I'm going to be serving storage from and installing all of my virtual machines to my primary storage server(the SC846 chassis I mentioned earlier that will be using the RAID card to my ESXi nodes) via iSCSI. I at first tried Microsoft's built in iSCSI target but the performance was pretty slow. Then I tried the Starwind VSAN iSCSI software and it was much, much better. It was like I installing VMs to directly attached drives.

Now, with that said, I am not sure if it had anything to do with me using a Dell 5448 switch that supposedly "self optimizes" for iSCSI traffic. I tried MSFT's iSCSI implementation before I got the switch, got the switch, then tried StarWind. Because before I was just using a standard ASUS RT-N66U router.
 

paranoidAndroid

New Member
Oct 23, 2014
12
1
3
44
Are you using freenas or doing raid? your first post you mention freenas and you would then want to flash the card to IT mode which may render the BBU/cache useless since its utilizing RAM

Ive been using a h700 (no bbu or additional cache) flashed to IT mode for 3 years first on a physical box now doing pass through on esxi (with 4x6TB seagates) with no issues on freenas
 

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
78
28
33
Are you using freenas or doing raid? your first post you mention freenas and you would then want to flash the card to IT mode which may render the BBU/cache useless since its utilizing RAM

Ive been using a h700 (no bbu or additional cache) flashed to IT mode for 3 years first on a physical box now doing pass through on esxi (with 4x6TB seagates) with no issues on freenas
Well I might still use FreeNAS but let the controller handle the RAID. I'm aware of the stipulations made about how FreeNAS prefers to completely handle the drives raw but I would prefer the R-o-C for now as opposed to something like ZFS. The hardware agnosticism is nice but for RAID6 I really prefer to have the BBU for the write cache performance and I want the controller to handle spin downs and staggered spin ups.
 

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
1,017
331
83
Minnesota
That's a good price, I may buy a bunch for some older servers, as backups. If you can get the LSI, go for it. The battery will probably be closer to dead than useful so will have to budget replacement.
 

Dajinn

Active Member
Jun 2, 2015
512
78
28
33
The only thing I really need now is a mini SAS cable that will be long enough to reach the expander port on the backplane. I have one but I think it's more suited for cards with the ports on the end. Any suggestions on where I can get a cheap but long enough cable?
 

NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
596
133
43
Edmonton, AB, Canada
That's a good price, I may buy a bunch for some older servers, as backups. If you can get the LSI, go for it. The battery will probably be closer to dead than useful so will have to budget replacement.
The vendor I'm getting mine from has tested the batteries and guarantees them >50% so hopefully that won't be an issue.
 

NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
596
133
43
Edmonton, AB, Canada
I'm going to be looking for an ISCSI based volume for vSphere to drive 10GbE switching where an old 1gbe NetApp FAS2040ha isn't cutting it. If you're doing just file services or hyperv storage I could see native 2012 DeDupe being enough I like it enough in file servers. Really does get slower though the more TB you toss at it.

CacheCade on an H700 is Read only vs Read/write with CC 2.0/H710?
 

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
1,122
125
63
34
deslok.dyndns.org
I'm going to be looking for an ISCSI based volume for vSphere to drive 10GbE switching where an old 1gbe NetApp FAS2040ha isn't cutting it. If you're doing just file services or hyperv storage I could see native 2012 DeDupe being enough I like it enough in file servers. Really does get slower though the more TB you toss at it.

CacheCade on an H700 is Read only vs Read/write with CC 2.0/H710?
yes the 700 is read only, were using ours for both hyper-v and fileserver although i'm not running dedup on the VM share with the iscsi targets(only 1tb worth of vm's and i've allocated 8tb worth of space for now) so there's no need it does save us a lot on the fileshare though(about 40% with 5tb worth of data and growing)
 

NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
596
133
43
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Uh. Well me too. But that's not the option on the table, so....

Pretty sure my vendor is the same as that auction, just with another name. Description reads identical.