Switching from onboard sata to dell raid card

[thatnovaguy]

Within the last year I upgraded from using an old am3 motherboard to an dual xeon board with practically no problems other than a few sata ports not working which was no big deal at the time as I didn't need the ports. A few months ago, however, I added more drives and needed more sata ports, and thus added a cheap realtek raid card. It worked ok, but would bottleneck my system terribly whenever I was transferring from share to share within the server.

Last week I decided to upgrade and added a Dell Poweredge H310 controller card with 2 sas breakout cables. The thought was that if all the drives were handled through the same device it would eliminate any bottlenecks when transferring from share to share (or drive to drive). The card seems to work fine but seems to have changed the drive names so that now unraid doesn't read them as being the same devices (see picture). For now I can switch back to using the onboard sata ports so I can get back to running my server, but I would really like to use my new card.

 

What do I need to do or change to migrate from onboard sata to the h310 card?

Thanks in advanced!

-Andrew

[ashman70]

What you should of done before switching to the Dell HBA is to record your drives or take a screen shot of what you have provided use with, before making the change. The only thing you really have to make sure of is that the same drive that was your parity drive before is your parity drive now. Then you can simply do a new config and everything will be ok, you will not lose any data as long as the parity drive is the same drive now that it was before you switched to the Dell HBA, that is the most important thing. Also, I should mention that you should have any important data backed up as well and not have it in only one place, your unRAID server.

[thatnovaguy]

Ok I see what you're saying, but I guess I didn't paint the whole picture. I know what drive went where. If you look at the picture I provided you can see how the drives were originally labeled compared to what the hba labeled them. I knew it would wipe the parity and keep everything else, but it wouldn't even let me start the array. That's why I was so confused.

[SSD]

I believe that the new card is naming the drives "correctly" (i.e., compatible with the way most controller and MBs would name the drives).

 

This is super easy to fix. You need to do a new config, assign the disks to the proper slots (including parity and data disks), indicate to trust parity, and start the array.

 

Make sure all of your drives mount. You could do a non-correcting parity check for a few minutes and make sure not parity errors (if you left off a drive the parity errors would be enormous in seconds, if it goes a minute with none you should be fine).

 

I have an Areca controller that also names drives weirdly. There is a plugin called "Dynamix SCSIDevices" that fixes it for that controller.. It may also work for yours, but I'd experiment, and if it is naming disks weirdly, might suggest avoiding that controller for array disks.

[thatnovaguy]

Oooh ok, I understand now. I'll give it a whirl tomorrow afternoon. I share my plex server with family so I try to limit its downtime, lol. Thanks so much for all the help!

[Diode663]

How did you setup the h310? Did you flash it to it mode or do you have a bunch of raid 0s to pass the disks through? This card should be flashed to it mode for unraid and it will pass the drive id's cleanly so it would be like nothing changed

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[SSD]

Sorry - I think my earlier post was backwards.

 

Although the method I laid out would work to bring the array online, it looks like the NEW controller is the one naming the drives wrong, not the old.

 

See @Diode663 post above to ensure you have set up the h310 properly.

 

If you are not able to resolve, the method of installing that plugin may resolve the issue. You should not have to do a new config and trust parity procedure. But you really want the controller to use the standard naming convention, or you will have problems with upgrades and even moving disks between ports in your array.

[thatnovaguy]

Ok, so I looked into flashing my hba and found this guide. Am I pointed in the right direction or do I need a different method?
Sorry for all the questions but using server grade hardware is pretty new to me and I often find myself in over my head.

[Diode663]

That guide looks like it will work. Once its flashed the card will just pass the drives with no configuration. 

 

This is the guide I used:

https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/updated-sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/

Edited September 25, 2017 by Diode663

[Fireball3]

There is also a toolset specific for the DELL cards which tries to make life a bit more comfortable.

Either way will do.

 

[SSD]

For anyone reading, a way to avoid all this drama is to buy an 9201-8i controller instead of the Dell or Perc or 9211 cards. The 9201 is a pure HBA and requires no flashing.

 

The 9207-8i is also an excellent choice, albeit a bit more costly. But is recommended if SSDs are going to be attached, or if you are using a SAS expander and need the bandwidth. it is also recommended if you need to put the card in an PCI 3.0 x4 slot. This will allow you to run 8 drives at full speed, whereas the 9201, with the PCI 2.0 speed, could constrain you a little with ALL drives running in parallel.

[thatnovaguy]

Ok, so after a vacation and some house sitting I finally got to flash my h310 to IT mode and I'd like to report that everything is working wonderfully! I've even got a sas expansion card I bought by mistake working as well. Thanks so much for all the help, everyone!