R720 No Raid Controller

[Icemanch]

This is kind of an emergency. I'm furiously googling for the answer but perhaps someone here knows the answer.



I have committed to purchasing an R720 with the below specs. The service tag is 3BNCMV1.

2x E5-2609 4c/4t 2.4 GHz
16GB DDR3 1067MHz
4x 3.5" Hard Drive Bays <<<< This is the problem



I assumed the listing was a mistake and looking at the bezel it seemed like there were just blanks that had to be removed. No big deal as I can purchase some caddys. However, looking at the service tag and it says

342-3588 : 3.5" Chassis with up to 4 Hard Drives and Software RAID

There is no raid controller. So it can only hold 4 drives AND only in SATA not SAS.



Is there a way to add the controller and other required parts so that it can hold the standard 8 drives and use SAS?



Thanks

 

[BLinux]

can you post a photo of the front of the server? I know the R720s with the 2.5" bays are typically pretty modular and can be reconfigured. I'm not sure about the ones with the 3.5" bays.

you can always add mini mono SAS controller later on, but you'll need the special cable that goes from motherboard to backplane. The part I'm not sure about is whether you can swap the front modules out to add the backplane. It's easy for the 2.5" models... not sure about the 3.5".

 

[vl1969]

It all depends on what is your plan for this server. Why do you need raid?

 

[mobilenvidia]

You could get the H710 Mini and run cable from it to the 4bay backplane ie replace SFF-8087 cable coming of Motheboard to backplane
This cable is awkward as its proprietary 8port in one connector vs standard SFF-8087 having just 4 ports and needing 2x cables
Or any other RAID card in a PCIe slot and run a SFF8087 cable(s) to back plane

The S110 SW Raid can only control 4x drives max, I do believe this is just the Intel Chipset in RAID mode

Backplane may have more bays and another SFF-8087 connector to connect to a RAID/HBA controller

 

[koharski]

On my 16 bay SFF r720 the backplane appears to be riveted in. Even if you could find a new backplane, you'd need to get the hardware for the drive cages. You will also have trouble getting a power source for the drives.

IMO, you best option at this point would be to either purchase another chassis that has the backplane and drive bays, or get an external JBOD and connect it to a HBA with external ports.

 

[Icemanch]

Thanks for the replies. Here is what I found out and what I ended up doing.

The R720 3.5" apparently comes in a software raid (4-Drive) version and a hardware raid (8-drive) version. The 4-Drive uses that onboard S110 and can do max 4 drives as pointed out. The up side is that the everything in the 4-Drive version is identical to the 8-driver version other than the raid controller not being installed and the SAS cable being a single cable (B-Cable) instead of a double cable (AB-Cable). That means the back plane, the chassis, the drive bays are all the same.

So, simple enough, I ordered an H710 and the double cable (AB-Cable). The driver fillers can be removed fairly easily once you find the trick. On the bottom of the server there is a tiny hole under each HD bay. You have to pull on the filler and push something small into the hole to make it release. Once, it's released you can installed drives into the bay without anything else required.

Pretty, straight forward.