0

We have a Dell T320 with a S110 software RAID with 7200RPM SATA drives. The RAID level is 10 with four drives. I underestimated the demand on the disk, and it is now a major bottleneck of the system.

Is it possible to replace the drives with SSDs?

If so, can they be hot-swapped? What is the recommended upgrade path?

Yanzzee
  • 103
  • 6
  • I've seen a similar question, but it was regarding SAS to SATA drives. In this case, both the existing and new drives would be SATA. – Yanzzee Feb 19 '16 at 06:04

1 Answers1

1

Try replace S110 to other high end raid card, such as H700/H710. This raid card have a feature called cachecade which will boost performance dramatically with SSD. try to google "PERC H700 cachecade" to get more details.

H700 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013X1JXBE?m=A4J4F1MELOD6E&qid=1455865139&ref_=sr_1_11&refinements=p_4%3ADell&s=merchant-items&sr=1-11

if no backplane for hotplug, you'll need a conversion cable http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012BPLYJC/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687542&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B005JZDUHQ&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1MVJ61GDYQQRB7DACP8M

But one thing that I'm not sure is, whether H700 can import S110 raid config or not, make sure make a full backup before any move.

Good luck

Ronald Poon
  • 51
  • 4
  • One more thing. Dell raid card is picky, only DELL certified SSD work with DELL raid card, and Samsung 850 EVO is one of them. – Ronald Poon Feb 19 '16 at 08:21
  • What about replacing the drives with SSDs? They are currently Dell 7200 SATA. Do I just need to restore from a backup, or can I hot swap? – Yanzzee Feb 20 '16 at 06:24
  • If your configuration is 4x500G SATA RAID-10, may try to buy 4x500G SSD and replace drive one by one, for example replace drive-1, wait until RAID drive synchronized and then replace drive-2...etc. SSD is cheap, only if size smaller than 1T, if 1T+ SSD is another story. By default, S110 support hotplug and if your server have hotplug tray, then you can hot swap the drives. – Ronald Poon Feb 24 '16 at 08:53
  • One more thing, S110 only have 3Gbps per connection and possibly a bottle neck, thats why I recommend to change to H700, which provides 6Gbps connection. – Ronald Poon Feb 25 '16 at 06:55
  • Thanks, this has been helpful. I'd really like to see some more info on replacing RAID drives with SSD hot-plug. I'm not confident in it enough to do it myself yet. And they are 1TB drives, but it might still be worth it for this server that runs everything for a small business. – Yanzzee Feb 29 '16 at 04:38