SAS drives on HP z620 not recognized

[Sammy_Sza]

Hi, I have a HP Z620 workstation which is an awesome machine. recently, i wanted to add 3 SAS drives to the lower drive bays.. So, I ordered 3 x 600GB 3.5" 15K SAS Hard Drives. When i got them, I popped them in to the system. After restarting the machine, upon pressing ctrl+I, the SAS hard drives are not shown or recognized. 

I researched the forums a bit, and figure that perhaps I might need one of the following to be put in my system in order for the SAS drives to be recognized?? and then be configured with RAID?

-LSI 9212-4i 4-Port SAS 6Gb/s RAID Card 

-LSI 9260-8i MegaRAID SAS 6Gb/s ROC RAID Card

-LSI 8888ELP 8-port SAS HW RAID Card 

All i am trying to do is, add more capacity to the system but the same time get decent RAID protection, and read/write performance (I plan to use the machine for hosting a few VMs)

I prefer a hardware RAID, over the software or the integrated one. 

My question is:

Is getting the RAID controller card going to solve what i am trying to do? Or is there any other cable that i need to buy? Also, since i am not that familiar with connectors - i dont know if there is like a SAS to SATA connector that i need to get? i dont know how to connect things..

I am thinking that - the RAID card will go into a PCI card slot, and may be some type of connector cables (three of them??) that need to be connected to something so that the hard drive connectors (SATA?) the actual SAS drives plug-in to will all work..

Please let me know which RAID card would you recommend.. I don't plan on adding more than 3 SAS drives to the system.. 

Thank you so, so, much!! I truly appreicate any help i can get..

- Sam

[DGroves]

the z620 does not support "SAS" unless you add a controller card (such as the ones you mentioned)

however since you list 3 drives, i'm guessing you are trying to use raid 5 or perhaps raid 1E, please be advised that raid 5 is no longer a recommended raid mode with today's large capacity drives 

RAID 1E is a type of nested RAID level that utilizes two-way mirroring on a minimum of two disks. It is similar to RAID level 1 but extends on its capabilities by supporting more physical disks. RAID 1E is also known as striped mirroring, enhanced mirroring and hybrid mirroring

so unless doing raid 1E ,.... using a software based raid is suggested as it is reliable, and can be xfered to any motherboard/controller that uses sata ports.

using a raid controller really has no benefits for your usage and locks you into a controller which may cause issues if the controller dies as it must now be replaced with the same family (you can't use adaptec with a Lsi based raid and so on)

last, the only controller that is not a legacy/obsolete controller on your list is the 9260 which is a true raid card with cache/battery  the 9212 card is available in "IT" firmware (no raid) or "IR" (raid with no cache, so no raid 5) and is not a full hardware raid card

Edit: you will also need "forward" type cables for the lsi 9260 card, reverse cables will not work (google this for more info)

[Sammy_Sza]

Thank you, @DGroves. This is actually a test/dev machine with not much of critical things that will run on there. The RAID is only for the general protection, and since I only have 3x600Gig SAS drives, i thought of using RAID 5, but RAID 1e sounds intriguing so i will give that a read.

On the RAID card itself, the one you have identified, the 9212 card - will it do RAID 1E? or I am just wondering to buy a RAID card that will just work, without much expectations of support, legacy etc.. or like you suggested, may be do software RAID. Now, when you say SW RAID, do you mean use RAID within Windows server? or are you referring to onboard RAID?

Is there any other RAID card that you would suggest, given that this is a test/dev box, and not much of a need to support critical data.. just hard-drive performance would be good thing..  the SAS drives I got are 15K rpm.. 

Thank you so much! I appreciate the help.

Sam

[DGroves]

software raid is just that,...... raid done without hardware other than standard sata ports this includes the windows software raid or 3rd party raid like "ZFS"  note that software raids are not bootable for most of them as a rule

no, the 9212 card with IR (or IT) firmware is not capable of 1E

however the adaptec 68xx/78xx series cards are capable of 1E and these controllers unlike the LSI ones can do full hardware raid and JBOD

the only lsi card that can do some raid (no raid 5/6) and jbod is the 9240 which is a card that performs no better than the 9212

[Sammy_Sza]

Are the Adaptec 68xx/78xx series cards compatible with Z620?

Perhaps something like this one, would it work? Its a LSI 9260..

https://ebay.to/2MNQv8L

Thank you!

Sam

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

i recommend the 7160 series over the 6805 if you can afford the 60-80 dollars  for one with the supercap from ebay vs the 10-20 for a 6805 as the 7 series is pci-e 3.o vs the 6 series 2.0

the 7 series is faster and will still work when placed in a newer system if you upgrade at some point

the 7 series supports true JBOD, and can support mixed raid/jbod at the same time

the 6 while it can do jbod does write a modified data-block to the drives (not true jbod, but good for most people)

i have both series with a 6 on my z800 and a 7 on the z820

Examples (as of 6-13-2019)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Adaptec-ASR-71605-16-Ports-2274400-R-Raid-Card-AFM-700-1GB-Flash-CacheVault...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASR-6805T-ADAPTEC-SGL-2272800-R-512MB-6GB-S-8I-PORT-RAID-CONTROLLER-LP-W-BA...