Upgrading a PERC h310 to a PERC H710 mini RAID controller on a Dell R620

Question

I have an ESXi 5.0 Free license host using an internal Datastore (RAID 5, 5 Disk) that was configured with a Dell PERC h310 RAID controller. The disk performance was very poor, so I upgraded to the PERC H710 Mini. The IT Tech installed the controller and powered the host back on. I had to rescan the controller and the datastore appeared. Should any settings be changed in the RAID BIOS, or should the default settings be sufficient? Is they anything to be aware of when performing this type of upgrade in order to achieve the maximum performance?

Solution

Congrats! Sounds like you worked at a low level, and successfully made the jump.

At this point, you should leave everything alone and make sure the system is stable.

Most of us leave those PERC cards at stock config. There is rarely any benefit from changing the config.

The #1 issue your config will have is that it is RAID5. If you want real perf improvement, especially for writes, you need to move to RAID10.

Comments

[austinian]

You'll also want a RAID controller battery, and a method to cleanly stop writing in the case that power loss is imminent, etc.