RAID Controller Questions

[Dennis Neufeld]

Hi guys, few questions:

I have a Proliant ML570 G2 server, quad 2.0 Xeon. I am correct in that while it does have an on-board SCSI controller there is no on-board RAID controller, right?

So here is my question: Will pretty much any PCI-X RAID Controller card work in the server as long as it supports the cabling/drive types that I have?

I have been looking at the Smart Array cards but there are also others out there that aren't necessarily HP branded that look good as well.

Thanks!

[Andrew Young_2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Dennis.

First the warning: Other third party cards could invalidate your warantee. That should keep the lawyers happy.

Yes, there are third party controllers that do work on that unit, some of the Adaptec cards for example. However I don't know of a definitive list of which ones do.

Regards

Andrew Y

[Dennis Neufeld]

Thanks for your reply, I have purchased the server through someone else and as far as I know it is not under warranty any more.

Would some of the IBM SCSI cards work?

[Andrew Young_2]

Hi Dennis.

It depends on the OS for starters. If you are considerring using Linux I would approach with caution unless the distro you are using is a recent SUSE or Red Hat/Oracle/Fedora distro. Windows Server 2003 will probably be happy, not sure about XP/Vista though.

Also be careful with some of the IBM cards as there are models that are not true SCSI or RAID cards (which is why there are issues with Linux) but some sort of hybrid that allow the OS to do some of the work. But that again depends on the model you are using.

Also since HP (and IBM) have propietry firmware on their disks I am not sure what the effect of this will be.

Regards

Andrew Y

[Dennis Neufeld]

Thanks, I appreciate your help. I guess I will start looking for a Smart Array 6400 controller.