Question

Maximum Harddrive Configuration For Raid

Asked by: artisit

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2650 laying around that I would like to convert into an NFS/SAN server.  It is a 2U rack mountable machine with 3 x 36G Ultra 320 SCSI drives in it currently.  I'd like to put as much disk space in and build a RAID 5 stoage solution.  There are two drive enclosures with "blanks" covering the other 2 drive bays.  My question is, what are the biggest drives I can put in this Dell?  Is there limitations based on the RAID controller?  Can I put 5 x 300GB Ultra 320 drives in the machine?

I'd like to try to build a low cost, but reliable iSCSI SAN if possible.

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Asked On
2008-08-08 at 15:26:47ID23634240
Tags

Dell

,

PowerEdge

,

2650

,

Raid

Topic

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
2
Points
125
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: aleghartPosted on 2008-08-08 at 15:49:49ID: 22194142

>Can I put 5 x 300GB Ultra 320 drives in the machine?
Yes.  5x300GB in RAID 5 will give you ~1,200GB terabytes (n-1).

The O.S. will require drivers for the RAID controller.

If using FreeNAS, the PERC 6i is supported in FreeBSD 6.3+, but you'll have to use a nightly build...even less stable that v0.69 beta.  PERC 5i is OK, IIRC.

 

by: devinnoelPosted on 2008-08-09 at 15:12:10ID: 22197821

The SCSI spec for ultra320 specifies up to 16 devices on the SCSI bus, but that includes the controller, so in reality 15 other devices. Most RAID controllers, including the Dell PERCs (I think the 2650's have PERC 3's)  are dual channel, so that mean's a total of 30 disks, not that they have that many slots in the internal RAID cages.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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