I am looking at the specs and manual for the IBM System x3650. According to the specs a ServeRAID-8k-l hardware RAID comes standard, but there's an option to upgrade to ServeRAID-8k. If I understand this correctly, this system will always have some h/w RAID.
I have found that h/w RAID firmware often assumes that all disks attached should be part of a RAID configuration managed by h/w, and of the same make of h/w at that. This won't always be the case, either because one is using s/w RAID and/or because HDDs are being brought in from other systems with data on them.
My question is whether this limitation applies to the x3650 or whether the on-board SAS ports can 'pass-through,' allowing the OS to 'see' an attached physical disk directly.
(I'm quite cautious because I once bought an Adaptec RAID whose specs and manual claimed it had this capacity, only to find out it didn't.)
I'm also wondering of the same on-board controller, notwithstanding the usual cautions on using disks that big, whether it is able to talk to 2TB disks (I've seen some that don't).
Best Answer
Both of the RAID cards (8k or 8k-l) you are considering are able to configure the drive as a "Simple Volume". This is done in the ServeRaid Manager management software bundled with the server. documentation here
This simply exposes the drive as a single LUN. This approach is often used when recovering damaged RAID arrays for example. (However, see the comments below.)
It seems that these controllers however have only been updated to provide support for 2TB drives. There is no mention of 3TB device support in the most recent firmware update.