Source
r/sysadmin•
HighOctaneTT

What 'Enterprise' drives would you match to a Dell PERC H200 RAID controller?

I've got a couple of Dell tower servers with no drives in them. Controller is a PERC H200. I'd like to run them with whatever Dell would've originally shipped them with but I haven't been able to work out what they were.

I appreciate that the jury is out on whether 'enterprise' drives really matter but in this case I really do want 'enterprise' drives so I can tick that box ;-)

So I'm seeking recommendations. I'm looking at 1TB capacity, performance not especially important (SATA3 7200k fine).

Edit: thank you all for the replies. I will most likely throw Seagate Constellation drives in there.

Posted Jul 5, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC · edited

1013
waygooder•

I've switched to hgst and at this point probably have 100 in production machines vs probably about 100 Seagates. The Seagates die all the time but I haven't lost a single hgst yet..

The hgst's are newer but I do have some that are over 2 years old because I've been replacing the Seagates with them as they die. Small sample size I know, but from my perspective I don't trust Seagate anymore.

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digitalcriminal•

Hgst? Is that Hitachi?

2
SirEDCaLot•

Hitachi Global Storage Technology.

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canhazraid•

The H200 is a re-branded LSI SAS2008 card, and will generally support any SATA or SAS disk. Dell exclusively uses server grade disks in the PowerEdge line.

HGST Ultrastar, Western Digital RE3/RE4, Seagate Enterprise disks (previously Barracuda ES and ES.2) are all options.

Are you price conscious? GoHardDrive sells white-label server disks on eBay for a fraction of what new disks cost. They have a one-year warranty from GoHardDrive, but are generally well known for which disk is which on forums like ServeTheHome. The 2TB's he sells are WD-RE4's for example.

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Stealth107Jack of All Trades•

My workplace has a Dell tower server with a PERC H200 with two drives that came preinstalled.

Their product ID is ST1000NM0033-9ZM173, Google tells me they're "Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST1000NM0033 1TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive".

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HighOctaneTTOP•

Awesome, many thanks for that :-)

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IntellingetUsername•

If you want something new/save money, anything with TLER support should do the trick. There's the Seagate Constellation series, and also some Western Digitals that support TLER (Red, Purple -- but dont quote me on that, do your own research).

Any SAS interface drive should theoretically be OK.

However note that unless you got official Dell disks with Dell validated firmware you'd be running and unsupported configuration and anything can happen. If you must use 'whitebox' drives, get a whitebox controller like a pci-e LSI of some sort.

You could have a look on ebay for old drives form decommissioned servers. They're usually cheap so you can buy a few spare and keep shelf stock for hot/cold spares. But buying used drives with who knows how many power-on hours carries its own risks.

I wouldn't use such a system for any important data.

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irwincur•

Dell originally used WD RE drives for that time frame and then switched to Seagate Constallations. When drive prices jumped, I also noted that they were using some Toshiba drives as well. Any drive that supports TLER should be ok, for the buck I would say WD Red's are probably your best bet. Not sure if the Dell management software will see them accurately though, the change happened around the time that card was released.

Now, something to know about that H200. It is a TERRIBLE RAID controller. While it sound good on paper, it is lacking one really important feature - a battery. So expect 10MB max write speeds (I have seen much less in the real world) and potential data loss and OS destruction on any hard boot or power outage.

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TheSp1d3r•

When it comes to hard drives I like HGST too, but I like the numbers that BackBlaze puts out perodically.

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MertsA•

If you want a SATA drive and something as close as possible to what you would get from Dell for a 1TB drive: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Enterprise-WD1003FBYZ/dp/B00D38U4GQ

the last server I bought from Dell came with a pair of those rebranded. Supposedly the UBER of that drive is on par with the majority of SAS drives out there so if you want enterprise and SATA, that's probably what you're looking for. It's also pretty cheap as far as enterprise drives go.

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Anon_IT_Guy•

The jury is not out on ent drives vs consumer.

The reason people incorrectly believe this is that a few companies of late have been advocating the use of standard "consumer" drives in various types of cold storage solutions, I.e. Applications that require very little extended periods of high load and lots of IOPs.

Enterprise drives are still very much a thing and do provide that extra performance and reliability when paired with the right application.

Of course there is always the ssd option, with super fast speeds and raid rebuild times its a no brainer in my opinion.

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foreverinane•

If you weren't going to do software raid, throw the H200 in the trash and switch to an H700/710. A USB hard drive is faster than an H200's raid.

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pupp3t33r•

Probably 300GB Seagate barracudas. As a former dell support guy, I'd say that those were probably the most used drives. The 72GB were also popular. However any SAS drive should work

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