Install of H700 controller in dell R610

Question

We have just brought a refurbished dell R610 2 X 6 Core X5650, 96G Ram, SAS 6ir Raid Controller, 2 X Fujitsu MBC2073RC 2.5-Inch 15K 73GB SAS Hard Drive.

We are going to also be installing additional drives:

• 2 X Intel 730 2.5-Inch 480 GB SSD's SSDSC2BP480G4R5
• 2 X Samsung Momentus SpinPoint ST2000LM003 2TB 2.5"

I also seperatly brought a refurbished H700 Raid controller to use rather than the SAS 6ir card.

I now have all the parts in front of me (I hope) but on searching for install instructions I can't seem to find decent instructions / videos on how to install this card in the H700. Does anyone have links or can describe what to do? Eg should I:

• Remove the existing SAS 6ir and install the H700 where the 6iR was? (I am guessing yes...)
• etc

Eg in the Dell R610 owners manual on page 89 they talk generally about installing an expansion card. I also looked in the Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller Cards H700 and H800 but that talks a lot about configuration of parameters for performance, configuring RAID etc but it doesn't really talk much about actual installation.

So how do I install this H700 card in our Dell R610? Hints, pointers, links?

[Edit] Photos are:

H700

H700 Label

H700 plus cables

Cable Ends

R610 Overview

SAS 6ir Card

Solution

There are three types of H700 cards.

1. Dell PERC H7000 Integrated Card
   • This looks almost exactly like the adapter card, key difference is the PCIe backing plate seen in 2nd image below.

2. Dell PERC H700 Adapter Card

3. Dell PERC H7000 Modular Card

I couldn't find a good pic for one of these. They only existed for a short time until Dell went to another version and called it the H710, which only lasted a short while until the H800 modular card.

The integrated card installs into the dedicated internal storage slot of the server. See your server motherboard map that came with it to identify the exact location. I put a photo of the motherboard view at the bottom of the post. The adapter goes into a PCIe slot - self explanatory The Modular installs only into blade servers, if you have that one. Bad luck.

Motherboard View

Once you've completed physical installation update your firmware to the most recent version. I believe it's AO6 but you will want to validate. Here's a link to AO6.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=3HD0T

Comments

[Grant]

Which H700 card do you have? It comes in a couple form factors - photos or exact part numbers would help.

[sysjas]

I just uploaded the photos now. I think the serial number in there is Dell 0W56W0 CN-0W56W0-13740-12P-029G-A00 but some of those zeros might be letter-O's or vice-versa...

[JimNim]

+1 on points for Paul Delasaux, his answer was correct from a technical standpoint (not throwing any unsupported work-arounds into the mix). I'd mark his answer as "correct"

[sysjas]

So I just take the bracket off of my card and then install it in the same place where the existing SAS 6ir is located? Thanks!

[Citizen]

The pictures of the card you posted do not look like the modular card, they look like the adapter which would go into the PCIe slot.

[Citizen]

From the looks of it you would leave that SAS6 card in, it's fine. You would connect your cables from the pcie card to the backplane. You'll need to enter the bios and ensure the new card is listed as a bootable device as well, you may want to put it at the top of the order unless you need to boot of a cd or dvd to get an OS on that thing. Good luck!

[sysjas]

I am fairly confident that my card is not the modular card (It doesn't look figure 2 in this) However it also looks like I could just unscrew the slot plate from the card and then this card would install in the exact same place as the SAS6ir card currently is. But instead you are recommending I have both in our R610... So just to confirm, you have both a SAS6ir card and a H700 in some of your systems?

[Citizen]

Some of my customer systems do, yes. We don't use Dell within our infrastructure. We're HP BL and Cisco UCS.

[Citizen]

You can have two raid controllers in a single host. It's fine.

[Citizen]

Are you good? Looking to score the answer :) I hope my posts were helpful.

[sysjas]

Almost... They are quite helpful but I still have a few doubts. Why do you want to keep the original SAS6ir in there if you arena only using the adapter form of the H700? What is the difference between the adapter form of the H700 and the integrated form of the H700?

[JimNim]

That's an H700 Integrated card. You CAN install it in a PCIe slot while leaving the PERC6/I in place, but this is one of the two cards supported in the integrated slot that the PERC6/I is in... Just remove the PERC6/I, remove the mounting bracket from the H700, and install it in the integrated card slot (everything should still line up just right). If your BIOS and card FW aren't on weird old versions, there should be no problem at all.

[sysjas]

@JimNim Ahh thanks! So I saw this thread here on dell community which talks about flashing the H700 adapter to H700 integrated. I asked about this here so your answer is what I would have expected to be true but others say is more involved... Do you happen to know which version of the card BIOS I should be looking at here? Thanks!

[JimNim]

Aw crud... totally forgot about the FW difference, sorry about that man. Totally misled you. SO, yes it's possible to use LSI utilities to manually flash the alternate FW onto the card... that and the bracket and stickers really are the only difference. Hardware-wise they're the same. But you might just want to save yourself a lot of trouble and return this card / re-order the Integrated version and avoid the headache.

[JimNim]

That firmware flashing really might be worth a try, but keep in mind you could end up bricking the card (or at least eliminating the option to return it) if things don't go smoothly.

[JimNim]

Paul, you may also want to edit answer for completeness stating that the "adapter" card should only be installed in a normal PCIe slot, as using the internal slot gives boot errors due to the alternate FW for that card version is "incompatible" with that configuration. (See articles linked by sysjas)