Non-enterprise SSD in a C210 M2

[Johnny B]

Greetings everyone! Does anybody know if the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i controller in the subject UCS server will have any issues using the following Kingston SSDs in a RAID array? Would the customized "LSI SandForce controller" used by Kingston interfere with the MegaRAID controller?

http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/SV300S3_us.pdf

While they aren't "Enterprise" grade, they also aren't "Consumer" grade. They seem to be somewhere in between. Admittedly, the PDF mentioned above states, "This SSD is designed for use in desktop and notebook computer workloads, and is not intended for server environments." However, I'm merely interesting in know if it's possible from a technical perspective, even though it's not supported.

Many thanks!

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

The 9261 controller (and other Cisco controllers) are tested and programmed to work with specific range of drives.  I suspect the controller will not inventory the drives you are contemplating.

Assuming the other controller you a considering meets the PCI-E specs, then you 'may' get that to work if it will connect to the sas cable going to the backplane/sas expander.  You would need to use the Option ROM level utilities of the add-in controller to manage the physical drives and virtual drives as the CIMC would not manage/be aware of the unsupported storage controller.

Thanks,

Kirk...

[Johnny B]

Hello Kirk. As always, I appreciate your assistance.

I was going to attempt having the MegaRAID controller inventory a Kingston V300 SSD this past weekend, but I didn't have time. Hopefully, I'll get to it in the next few days.

In the meantime, if said test were to fail, do you know if it's possible to use an optical tray adapter meant for a laptop to install an SSD in the DVD drive bay? Doing so would at least allow me to have ESXi, which is the host operating system, use it as a read cache. Unfortunately, CacheCade certified SSDs are just too expensive.

Also, regarding the second paragraph of your response above, the "LSI SandForce controller" mentioned in my original post appears to be some kind of controller in the SSDs themselves, not an external controller. I'm not sure if that makes a difference, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention it.

Thanks again!

John

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

Thanks for the clarification on the LSI SandForce controller.

Never tried anything other than the DVD drive in that bay.

Let us know how the SSD test on the 9261 controller test turns out.

Thanks,

Kirk...

[Johnny B]

Will do.

BTW, do you happen to know if the SATA port to which the DVD drive is connected to is SATA 1, 2 or 3?  What about the integrated, onboard SATA controller?

Speaking of which, I located the SFF-8087 connector on the motherboard associated with the latter. However, what I didn't find was a way to deliver power to any devices utilizing said connector. How would one go about doing that?

[Johnny B]

Hello everyone. So I did a quick test last night and was quite pleased with how it turned out.

I mounted a Kingston V300 in an extra hard drive sled I had and slid it into the server. When I logged into the CIMC, the drive was accurately identified pretty much all the way around; manufacturer's name, model number, media type, interface type, firmware level and serial number. No reboot or controller inventory necessary. Nice!

Next step is to install three more and create a RAID 6 array. Fingers crossed!