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Purchased a MD1000 from craiglist, came with two SAS 5/E cards and cables. I dug out an old 2950, put server 2003 (32bit) on it, put in one of the cards, installed / updated firmware, etc. When I boot, I see: Dell SAS 5 Host Bus Adapter BIOS

then later, CTRL-C to run SAS Configuration Utility

then later, I can press CTRL-R to config the PERC 6/i

I found post where Dell doesn't support the MD1000 connected to a SAS 5/E.. When I go looking on ebay for a PERC 5/E card, they look very similar to what I have now...

Looking for direction on how to get the 2950 and MD1000 connected... should I get a card off ebay, even if it looks very close to what I have now? Is there a way to tell a difference

Kevin Baker
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  • I have a Customer running three fully-populated MD1000's attached to SAS 5/E adapters (in PE1950's) using the disks as JBOD with no problems. They're running Windows Server 2008 R2 and using them in an application that doesn't need RAID. Having said that, I suspect Windows software RAID and/or Storage Spaces would probably work fine with them. – Evan Anderson Apr 09 '14 at 21:11

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The MD1000 is a "JBOD" enclosure. The device that it connects to gets presented with access to all of the hard drives. If the device is a PERC 5/e controller, the card can manage the drives for you in RAID sets, and present Virtual Disks to the OS.

With a SAS 5/e card though, you would end up seeing every single hard drive separately in the OS (if it even worked - as you said, it is actually an unsupported config).

If you want a setup that is validated to function properly, go for the PERC 5/e card.

The MD1200 + SAS 6/E cards is supported now with Server 2012 and Storage Spaces to manage the drives... I would be curious whether or not you could get this to work on the hardware you have now, as the PE2950 does support Server 2012 (non-R2). Might be worth a try!

JimNim
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    Thanks for the help, exactly what I was seeing... the disk in the OS. I'll start looking for a PERC 5/E card (do you know the part number??), I got the MD1000 to do some testing, and the old 2950 will work fine... plans are to get a MD1220 to work with two R610's down the road. I'm self-taught in all of this, so didn't want to drop the cash on the MD1220 until I "played" with the technology a bit. Thanks again for the help. – Kevin Baker Apr 09 '14 at 19:10
  • Sure thing! Dell part numbers, from newest to oldest revisions: GP297, DM479, XM768. Any of the 3 should do the job. If you're planning on sharing access to the MD1220 (such as for a cluster of any kind), that will likely have to be done with HBAs and Storage Spaces. PERC cards in different servers can't share access to the same disks and play nicely (though you can use "split-bus" mode so that each can use half of the enclsure). – JimNim Apr 09 '14 at 19:13