Dell Perc 6i Manual

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   11 
3 Product Support 
3.1 Dell PowerEdge Server Support 
The Dell PERC H700 and PERC H800 are supported with 11th Generation Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers. 
Refer to Table 1 for the 11th Generation PowerEdge servers that support the PERC H700 and PERC 
H800. For the latest Dell PERC support matrix with Dell PowerEdge servers, visit the PERC web page 
at www.dell.com/PERC. 
Table 4. PowerEdge Server Support with PERC H700 and PERC H800 
PERC H700 Internal...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   12 
Table 5. Operating System Support with PERC H700 and PERC H800 
Supported Operating Systems 
Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 Family 
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Family 
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® Version 4 and Version 5 
RHEL 4.7 and later (32 and 64 bit)  
RHEL 5.3 and later (32 and 64 bit) 
Sun® Solaris™ 10 (64-bit) 
Novell® SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server Version 10 (64-bit) and Version 11 (64-bit) 
SLES10 SP2 and...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   13 
4 Product Overview 
4.1 PERC H700 and PERC H800 Overview 
Table 7. PERC H700 and PERC H800 Features 
Feature PERC H700 
Integrated/Adapter 
PERC H700 Modular PERC H800 Adapter 
RAID Levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60 
Ports 2 x4 internal 
mini-SAS wide 
ports 
1 x4 integrated 
SAS wide 
port 
2 x4 external 
mini-SAS wide 
ports 
Processor Dell adapter 
SAS RAID-on- 
Chip, 8-port 
with LSI 2108 
chipset 
Dell adapter 
SAS...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   14 
Feature PERC H700 
Integrated/Adapter 
PERC H700 Modular PERC H800 Adapter 
Physical Disk 
Power 
Management 
Yes Yes Yes 
RAID Level 
Migration 
Yes Yes Yes 
On-line Capacity 
Expansion 
Yes Yes Yes 
Non-Volatile Cache Yes No Yes 
SMART Support Yes Yes Yes 
Redundant Path 
Support 
N/A N/A Yes 
Dedicated and 
Global Hot Spares 
Yes Yes Yes 
Revertible Hot 
Spares  
Yes Yes Yes 
Hot Swap Devices  Yes Yes Yes 
Disk Roaming Yes Yes Yes 
Disk Migration Yes...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   15 
Feature PERC H700 
Integrated/Adapter 
PERC H700 Modular PERC H800 Adapter 
Clustering Card and software 
stack enables High 
Availability Clusters 
 Not supported 
4.2 CacheCade 
CacheCade provides cost-effective performance scaling for database-type application profiles in a 
host-based RAID environment by extending the PERC RAID controller cache with the addition of Dell-
qualified Enterprise SSDs.   
CacheCade identifies frequently-accessed areas...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   16 
 
Table 8. RAID Level Migration 
Source RAID 
Level 
Target RAID 
Level 
# of Physical 
Drives 
(Beginning) 
# of Physical 
Drives (End) 
Capacity 
Expansion 
Possible 
Description 
RAID 0 RAID 1 1 2 No Converting non-
redundant virtual disk 
into a mirrored virtual 
disk by adding one drive. 
RAID 0  RAID 5 1 or more  3 or more Yes At least one drive needs 
to be added for 
distributed parity data. 
RAID 0 RAID 6 1 or more  4 or more Yes At least two...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   17 
 Physical disk rebuild using hot spares 
 Enclosure affinity 
 Parity generation and checking (for RAID 5, 50, 6, and 60 only) 
 Battery backup of controller cache to protect data 
 Detection of batteries with low charge after boot up 
4.5.1 Non-Volatile Cache 
Dell PERC controllers with non-volatile (NV) cache use the standard battery as contained in the Dell 
PERC controllers with a battery back-up unit (BBU). The difference is in battery...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   18 
being a ready hot spare. This allows hot spares to remain in specific enclosure slots. While the 
controller is reverting the hot spare, the virtual disk remains optimal. The controller automatically 
reverts a hot spare only if the failed drive is replaced with a new drive in the same slot. If the new 
drive is not placed in the same slot, a manual Replace Member operation can be used to revert a 
previously commissioned hot spare. 
4.5.6 Enclosure...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   19 
4.7 Disk Roaming 
The PERC H700 and H800 cards support moving physical disks from one cable connection or 
backplane slot to another on the same controller. The controller automatically recognizes the 
relocated physical disks and logically places them in the proper virtual disks that are part of the disk 
group. Disk roaming can be performed only when the system is turned off. Disk roaming should not 
be performed during RAID level migration (RLM) or...

Dell 
DELL PERC H700 and H800 Technical Guide   20 
4.10 Virtual Disk Write Cache Policies 
The write cache policy of a virtual disk determines how the controller handles writes to that virtual 
disk. Write-Back and Write-Through are the two write cache policies and can be set on virtual disks 
individually.  
 
All RAID volumes will be presented as Write-Through (WT) to the operating system (Windows and 
Linux) independent of the actual write cache policy of the virtual disk. The PERC cards manage the...