ML150 G6 SATA PORTS

[Lacrimos]

Hello,

I have new  ML150 G6 server and on matherboard are 4 SATA (black) ports  other and  2 SATA (blue) (DVD-RW is pluged in one of this).

In manual docs is writen that  blue ports are for ODD. One of this blue port is free now.

I am looking for SATA HDD-s to buy for this server and want to know:

Can I use totaly  5 SATA HDD-s at same time? I mean one  SATA hard drive pluged in this blue port and  other 4 SATA ports too?

Does this server supports SATA 6 Gbit/s drives?

[Matti_Kurkela]

Here's the Quickspecs document for ML150 G6:

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13249_div/13249_div.HTML

It says this server uses the Intel 5500 chipset. It also says that the basic RAID controller of this server is "SmartArray B110i", which is known (from various discussions on this forum) to be nothing but a Intel AHCI-compatible SATA controller + a special driver to make it compatible with the true hardware RAID controllers of the SmartArray E and P series. For example, if you don't install the special driver, Linux can run the SATA controller just fine using the generic "ahci" driver module... and ignores any RAID settings made with the BIOS configuration tool when doing so, using the disks JBOD-style as separate disks.

Here's the Intel datasheet for that chipset:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/datasheet/5520-5500-chipset-ioh-datasheet.pdf

On page 29, it says that the I/O Controller for the 5500 chipset (also known as the "South Bridge") is one of the ICH9 or ICH10 series chips.

Here's the datasheet for the ICH10 series:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/datasheet/io-controller-hub-10-family-datasheet.pdf

On page 177 is the feature overview of the SATA controller of the ICH10 chip. Only 3 Gbit/s transfer rate is documented.

On page 180, the Intel Matrix Storage Technology (= the RAID functionality of the ICH10 chips) is described.

It says that RAID functionality of the chipset is supported for up to 4 drives only.

A suitable software driver might be able to use the 5th and 6th ports in a RAID set if required, but the lack of hardware support might mean at least some performance degradation, as the system CPU(s) would have to do the RAID-related tasks instead of using the functionality built into the ICH10 chip.

The Quickspecs document gives this URL for more information on SmartArray B110i:

http://www.hp.com/go/sataraid

It says it supports up to 6 drives, and only 3 Gbit/s transfer rates.

So yes, you could use 5 HDDs.

Most SATA 6 Gbit/s drives are downwards-compatible with 3 Gbit/s SATA controllers, so you could use 6 Gbit/s drives... but would receive no benefit over 3 Gbit/s drives.

[TVVJ]

The integrated SATA RAID controller Smart Array B110i controls only the hard drive ports and not the optical drive and hence the ports may not be used to setup five hard drives in the server.

Regards,

Vijayasarathy

[Lacrimos]

I want to use one blue sata port for HDD on which will be only OS (CentOS), and other 4 black sata ports for software raid 5.

Will be everything ok in this case?