I recently got a Dell PowerEdge R760XS with 12 bays for 3.5" drives, and currently, only 8 bays are filled with Seagate Exos X18 16TB drives. This is meant for a Milestone VMS system, and I need the storage to be reliable. The vendor mistakenly sent 8 drives instead of 12, which did save us money since we initially intended to order 12TB drives.
After reaching out to Dell support, I learned that they only sell their branded 12TB drives for this model. While their technicians acknowledged my 16TB drives, they were uncertain about the support for RAID setups with these non-branded drives. According to Dell and Seagate, the main difference is the firmware, which Dell claims is optimized for their RAID controller. They assured me that using the vanilla Seagate drives wouldn't pose problems for video storage but suggested I might face issues with mixed drives if used for file storage.
However, if the array fails, using Seagate drives means I'd have to deal with Seagate, whereas Dell would handle issues if I used their drives. The dilemma comes down to setting up a RAID 5 or RAID 6 with mixed drives or opting for a software RAID setup. I need advice on the best course of action since my options are limited, and I can't get the Dell drives. Also, is there a way to flash the Dell firmware onto the Seagate drives? I just want to avoid having to swap out my current server with the new one just to get more storage!
3 Answers
Contact them again and ask for the Dell part number from your existing drive. It might be listed as Dell DP/N 0JWV1P or similar. I'm pretty sure the mixed drives can work; they're probably just trying to cover themselves with the firmware talk. As for flashing Dell firmware onto the Seagate drives, you'd need specialized HDD repair tools, which might not be worth the risk, especially in production.
It would be interesting to see if you can successfully flash any custom firmware onto the Seagate drives. The encryption engine is embedded in the firmware, and if the controllers are the same, it could totally work!
That's what I was thinking! But realistically, how often does a sys admin call support for a failed array? If a drive fails, whether it's a Dell or Seagate, it usually gets sent back to the respective company for replacement. I've noticed they refurbish enterprise drives to like-new condition for resale, and honestly, I wouldn't mind ordering one to hack and see if a flash is possible.
I've used non-Dell drives in an R450 before and never had issues. They'll definitely blame any problem on those drives though, trust me on that! As for performance, I wonder how software RAID stacks up against hardware RAID. I manage several R760s with Linux that handle high data streams on software RAID, and honestly, I haven’t seen much difference. Your experience with Windows might differ, but it’s worth testing!
I checked the RAID controller settings, and it looks like I can select between Dell Optimized drives and any standard drives. I'll give the Dell Optimized a shot first and test the performance before switching to software RAID. I’ve set up a bunch of software RAIDs before, and the only downside was not having a hot spare, but with RAID 6, that shouldn't be a problem.
I spent some time looking for the Dell drives online. While I found some selling for about $300 with sleds, they were clearly the Seagate drives. So, I guess it's a gamble. Also, I saw that Dell has 20TB drives available, but they don’t sell them directly. Typical!