Posts made by BRRABill

And I thought my head was spinning 2 hours ago!

@scottalanmiller said:

Why a second server? Is that really warranted?

For DC redundancy. I really don't want to roll with one DC. I guess I could just install another copy of Server on a desktop for that purpose, though. I already purchased two licenses for it.

I was also thinking that since they will all be virtualized, it would be good to have a second server-grade box to be able to install to if the other server goes down.

@DustinB3403 said:

Virtualize every server you have, and run everything between the two host.

Virtualize Everything!

That is what we are going to do.

Each server will run 2 VMs.

machine 1 VM1 = DC
machine 1 VM 2 = data
machine 2 vm1 = DC
machine 2 vm2 = mail

I wanted to have 2 servers for DC redundancy.

Sorry to keep replying, but everyone is posting so quick I don't want anyone to miss anything.

The 480GB Kingston SSDs are under $250 each including cage and 3.5" adapter. So cost isn't really a concern there either.

The KC300 is a pro drive (similar to the Samsung 850) that is tuned slightly for server use. It's not enterprise-grade, but my Kingston rep (who, with the rest of Kingston have been GREAT) thinks it will be fine for my usage.

Our mailserver is currently sitting at around 110GB. The data server at 130. That's including data and OS (Server 2003). (I'll be buying a second server in a few weeks once I get this all worked out. I didn't want to buy them both in case any issues came up. And did they!! )

So
server 1 = dc/data
server 2 = dc/mail

The three Kingston SSDs are 480GB capacity. So there would be more than enough space.

Space is definitely not a problem. The SSDs I have are fine for space.

So does it seem we are leaning towards keeping the SSDs and throwing warnings to the wind?

As an afterthought, I thought about not getting the PERC controller and a straight LSI/Adaptec. But then wouldn't that cause the same problems, where the DELL server itself doesn't like the drive, hence flashing the amber? Or is the hotplug cage lights controlled by the adapter itself?

@Dashrender said:

What happens if the power supply in the server dies? You still want something to backup the cache on the controller card to cover this instance.

Ah, good point. Possibly a reason they go with the H710 then! And enterprise-class SSDs with power protection.

Yes, everything in the server is totally updated firmware-wise.

Pretty sure it's just an issue of it being a non-DELL drive. I read a lot of drives from other manufacturers were exhibiting the same symptoms.

I guess some SSDs work, and some don't. Kingston has been good with working with me, but this might not be fixable on their end.

I guess that would be ANOTHER question ... anyone using 3rd party SSDs that work with DELL servers?

I thought of one more question:

A lot of the talk of the enterprise SSD and battery on PERC cards revolves around power loss.

But why is that an issue if the server (probably) has a UPS and shutdown?

My concern is more not knowing if anything is going wrong with the drives.

Or having to look at these stupid flashing lights all day. (<= kidding)

I thought RAID 5 was frowned upon these days?

Well, we're a smaller company, so we could probably be down for a day or so.

We also have pretty good backups.

Not sure about the disk speed requirement, to be honest. Always just assumed go big!

Oh and thanks for the welcome. I hope it was a good first post, ha ha!

Thanks, everyone.

Scott invited me, and I am glad to be here.

I'm the IT guy in a smallish shop, so I'm always on the hunt for knowledge.

First off: hello everyone! (First post!)

So, I did a bunch of storage research before buying my latest server. The server I eventually ended up with was a DELL T320, with the PERC H310 card. I outfitted it with (2) 500GB 7.2K SATA drives in a RAID 1 array. The thinking was I was going to put a 2012 hypervisor on that array, and then use my own SSD drives for the VMs. This server will be used as a DC, and also either a moderate use file server or email server for a 20 person SMB.

I worked directly with Kingston, and received some trial SSD drives (KC300). The drives work, but as many here have probably seen, they constantly flash amber, throw up a lot of errors in Server Administrator, and of course provide no SMART monitoring or advanced warnings. I'm a little nervous at some point this is going to come back and bite me.

So now I am rethinking this whole thing, and where I should go from here. Even though you cannot buy them like this from DELL, I've been told the server can run SATA and SAS concurrently, so I think I have a lot of options. This server is new so data is not a concern.

Would love to hear any thoughts about my situation, or answers to the following questions.

Thanks in advance!

1. Am I nuts to consider these third party SSDs without any monitoring or predictive failure?

2. Would it make sense to trash the 7.2K drives, and just buy (4) SAS 10K drives for in there and make one big RAID 10 array?

3. Considering what I already have and our requirements, would it just make sense to buy a few more 7.2K drives and make a RAID 10 array out of them? Is there a huge performance difference between those two arrays? (7.2K vs. 10K both in a RAID 10.)

4. Sub question: where did 15K SAS drives go? DELL doesn't really offer them any more.

5. Do people buy the PERC H310? Seems like the H710 is mentioned a lot.