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I work with one of the biggest hosting companies on the planet. I got a dedicated server with hardware RAID 1 and two SAS 15k disks. I asked my hosting company if they could replace SAS with much bigger SATA drives as I need space on this machine, I do not need speed. They said that they do not do SATA only SAS and SSD and that they do not do replacements with bigger drives as this is not safe.

Is replacing RAID 1 drives with bigger drives to create bigger volumes (using MegaCli -LdExpansion command) something that would be considered wrong on professional environments? Is that a common\standard practice to not do that? Is is really that risky to do so?

Why would they not do SATA drives. Is it considered wrong on professional environments? Are there any reasons to not use SATA at all? (controller allows it; the manual says 'Each port on the SAS RAID controller supports SAS devices, SATA II devices, or both')

EDIT:

The controller is LSI MegaRAID 1078

Just to clarify my question is: Is it considered unprofessional to use SATA or replace RAID 1 drives with bigger drives on dedicated servers?

rumburak
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  • The professional standard is to regard your company's policy. – Zac67 Mar 03 '19 at 19:24
  • @Zac67 : That is fine. I understand that they may have higher standards then other hosting companies. I would like to know if this is considered as wrong practice by the industry or just something that this particular company regard as wrong practice, but generally considered as professional. – rumburak Mar 03 '19 at 19:36
  • I have leased servers with two other of the biggest hosting companies on the planet. They both offer SATA drives in most servers, and SAS drives in only a few of their higher end servers. – Michael Hampton Mar 03 '19 at 19:37

1 Answers1

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The SATA HDD are less expensive than SAS ones, but the driver is completely different. So you can not change the drives in the servers racks from one type to another one, as the connectivity is different. After, you may found some bigger SAS drives.

The next part is RAID1. If you change one drive to a bigger one, the RAID will reconstruct correctely, but only on the smallest capacity. When you will change the second drive, the capacity will stay on smallest one and you will not be able to use all the volume. The only solution is to crash the RAID by changing both drives and restore a backup.

Dom
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  • As far as I know SATA and SAS are interchangeable. At least my controller can do both – rumburak Mar 03 '19 at 19:13
  • @rumburak No, they're not. Most SAS controllers can speak SATA as well but the protocols are different and most often the drives as well. – Zac67 Mar 03 '19 at 19:25
  • @Zac67 : I think my controller does that. This is quote from the manual: 'Each port on the SAS RAID controller supports SAS devices, SATA II devices, or both'. – rumburak Mar 03 '19 at 19:30
  • @Dom : You can also expand RAID 1 just fine without breaking it with MegaCli -LdExpansion command – rumburak Mar 03 '19 at 19:59