Note: This is my entry into
Sleeprer54’s cool
Lean-n-Mean III write off. Total count 640 words.
Qualifications: I am the manager (Network Administrator) of a medium-sized server farm at a government agency, which consists of some 25 Dell PowerEdge servers of various models and designs. Those models include 6400’s, 6450’s 2500’s 2600’s, & 2800’s running Windows 2000 Advance Server or Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Disclaimer: This review is intended for those with intermediate or advanced server knowledge, or those individuals seeking in-depth information on Enterprise caliber server equipment. Few if any of the terms used throughout the review are expounded upon.
Unlike the simple IDE controller found in most, if not all, personal computers, enterprise-class servers require not only a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) controller card, but a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) controller as well to mange the redundant functionality of the drive array. Dell long ago tapped Adaptec Inc. to supply them with the PERC line of RAID controllers for their ever expensing line of PowerEdge (PE) servers. All of the Dell PE servers I administer have some iteration of PERC controller installed.
The
PERC 3/Di (PowerEdge RAID Controller), which shipped with PE 2500/2600/4600 files servers are integrated Dual Channel, RAID controllers capable of handling RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 10. Like all PERC3 controllers—of which there are many versions and functionality levels, the
PERC 3/Di utilizes the i960 100MHz processor. The Dual Channel functionality allows the
PERC 3/Di to operate either one internal, or one internal and one external channel concurrently, using cables up to 75 feet in length. Throughput on each SCSI channel can be as high as 160 MB/s, and the PERC 3/Di supports 160M SCSI, including low voltage differential (LVD) SCSI devices.
Note: the other popular version of the PERC 3 is the /DC (Dual Channel), which is an add-one PCI card with expanded functionality; e.g. the PERC 3/DC is capable of handling up to RAID level 50.
The
PERC 3/Di ships with 128MB of RAM for caching purposes, and an embedded Transportable Backup Battery Unit for array configuration storage in case of power failure. This is a very useful feature because if the array configuration is lost, it must be re-built with a loss of all data contained on the drives.
Installation & Usage
Since the
PERC 3/Di is an integrated RAID solution there is no installation necessary; they ship from the factory already configured. However, as time marches by the embedded BIOS may need to be flashed to improve functionality and integrate the controller more fully into the Windows environment. Starting with Dell BIOS upgrade A05 for instance, you can flash the controller from Windows.
Building the array is accomplished either via the
PERC 3/Di BIOS, or through Dell Open Manager Server Management tools. Either method affords you access to the full suite of tools needed to properly configure the RAID array.
As has been my experience with most Adaptec controllers, the
PERC 3/Di is reliable and performs as advertised. Throughput as measured by Windows performance monitoring tools is as advertised, though other factor may affect individual results.
Conclusion
If you need an enterprise level Ultra SCSI (160) RAID dual channel controller for your Dell PowerEdge server, you can't go wrong with the
PERC 3/Di.
Features:
• Integrated into the motherboard on most dual processor Dell PE servers, including the PE 2500/2600/4600.
• Featuring 64-bit, 66MHz interface.
• Extensive fault-tolerant capabilities, with on-board transportable battery backup
• IA-64 ready, with a high performance Intel i960 RISC I/O processor driving two Ultra160 SCSI channels.
• Windows NT/2000/2003 cluster support.
• Supports up to 60 hard drives with 32 drives per logical array, with RAID levels 0, 1, 3, & 5.
• Auto resume during array rebuild/reconstruction
• Supports up to 128MB ECC SDRAM.
• Intel i960Ã 100 MHz I/O Processor.
• Built-in Hardware XOR Engine for RAID Parity.
• Online Capacity Expansion; Online RAID Level Migration.
