Dell R710 RAID1 with SATA drives

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I've slightly messed up with the purchase of a 2nd hand server (Dell R710) and need a little assistance.

I had (wrongly) assumed that the server had RAID controller but it hasn't, so I need some help with the bits that I have got and what I need to buy to get where I want.

I want to connect 2x SATA 3.5" drives.

The server has no RAID card and the 4×3.5" backplane for the drives is a UL94V-0 unit. It is labelled SAS_A, so I'm not sure if I can use it for SATA drives.

There is no cable from this backplane, presumably because there is no RAID card installed for it to connect to.

Would I be correct in assuming that I could go ahead and purchase an H700 RAID controller card (with the data cables) and this would achieve what I need?

Is there a problem that the backplane is labelled SAS? I understand that this will be OK, but what about the connector on the UL94V, will this be OK to connect to the H700 directly for use with SATA drives? Or do I need to look at replacing the backplane also?

Any help at this stage would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Best Answer

So a few things:

  • The motherboard may have enough SATA connectors onboard for you to connect the drives directly and use software RAID
  • The missing cable to the backplane is what connects to the RAID card. If you buy the compatible PERC Hxxx card, you can just insert it in the slot, and connect it to the backplane
  • The backplane almost certainly is backwards-compatible with SATA, in my experience with Dell Servers and RAID setups. Dell themselves sell SATA drives as a cheaper option to SAS disks. However you can't combine them into a Virtual disk with SAS disks. R710 Spec Sheet

Dell R710 Technical Guidebook: https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-r710-tech-guidebook.pdf

EDIT: Check the post here, you should be able to connect a SAS backplane cable from that backplane to the motherboard, and then use the onboard controller to manage the disks.

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