I have a Dell R710 home server with a Dell PERC H830 SAS RAID adapter in it. I'm looking to add an MD1200 to my collection and trying to figure out whether it will work. I'm not concerned if it's supported. I only want to know if it will work at all.
First off, Dell says the H830 won't work in the R710. I beg to differ. I have it working right now hooked up to my white-box eight-bay SATA enclosure. It's fast and reliable. So strike one for Dell's sales team trying to tell me it won't work in an attempt to make me buy a new R730 server for my H830.
Now Dell tells me the MD1200 won't work with the H830 (I didn't tell them the H830 was in an R710 because they'd retreat to their prior "but the H830 won't work in an R710" argument). But why won't it work, I ask? The H830 is a 12Gb/s SAS card. The MD1200 is a 6Gb/s enclosure. SAS is backwards compatible by design so it's supposed to work. The MD1200 is nothing more than a big, dumb box to stuff drives in. The MD1200 controllers are little more than SAS expanders. There isn't any controller failover support. There isn't even any out-of-band management on the MD1200. Why in the hell shouldn't it work other than Dell wants to sell me a $7k MD1400 instead of letting me get a $400 MD1200 off eBay?
Given Dell's prior claims that stuff won't work when it actually does I'm not inclined to believe Dell. Does anyone have any experience with this? Has anyone gotten this combo to work?
Thanks,
Eric
First off, Dell says the H830 won't work in the R710. I beg to differ. I have it working right now hooked up to my white-box eight-bay SATA enclosure. It's fast and reliable. So strike one for Dell's sales team trying to tell me it won't work in an attempt to make me buy a new R730 server for my H830.
Now Dell tells me the MD1200 won't work with the H830 (I didn't tell them the H830 was in an R710 because they'd retreat to their prior "but the H830 won't work in an R710" argument). But why won't it work, I ask? The H830 is a 12Gb/s SAS card. The MD1200 is a 6Gb/s enclosure. SAS is backwards compatible by design so it's supposed to work. The MD1200 is nothing more than a big, dumb box to stuff drives in. The MD1200 controllers are little more than SAS expanders. There isn't any controller failover support. There isn't even any out-of-band management on the MD1200. Why in the hell shouldn't it work other than Dell wants to sell me a $7k MD1400 instead of letting me get a $400 MD1200 off eBay?
Given Dell's prior claims that stuff won't work when it actually does I'm not inclined to believe Dell. Does anyone have any experience with this? Has anyone gotten this combo to work?
Thanks,
Eric