Questions[h700](server)

I am in the process of designing an architecture based around a single Dell R910 server running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise.

I would like the server to have 8 RAID1 pairs of spinning disks, so I intend to implement:

Dell R910 Server Integrated PERC H700 Adapter with 1 SAS expander on each SAS connector (so 8 expanders in total) 7 RAID1 pairs of 143Gb 15K HDD, each paired on one connector using an expander 1 RAID1 pair of 600Gb 10K HDD, paired on the remaining connector using an expander

My main concern is not to introduce bottlenecks in this architecture, and I have the following questions.

1. Will the PERC H700 Adapter act as a bottleneck for disk access?
2. Will using SAS expanders for each RAID1 pair cause a bottleneck or would this be as fast as pairing disks directly attached to the SAS connectors?
3. Can I mix the disks, as long as the disks in each RAID1 pair are the same? I assume so.
4. Can anyone recommend any single-to-double SAS Expanders that are known to function well with the H700?

Cheers

Alex

We have just purchased 2 x Dell Power Edge R715 with the PERC H700 raid contoller, each machine has 6 x 300GB SAS drives.

I have set 2 drives up in raid 0 and 4 drives in raid 10 on each machine, but when installing ESX4 I cannot see any target disks for the installation.

This is my first time installing ESX4, am I missing something? Do I need a raid driver for ESX4? The documentation I have says that the H700 is supported.

I would like to set up a RAID10 array of 6 Intel SSD 320 SSDs, but over-provision them to enhance their performance and duration as per this PDF:
http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/45/95/459555_459555.pdf

Is this as simple as creating the array with lower capacity than the drive total? I can't seem to find options in the H700 BIOS config utility that pertain to physical drive partitions or options.

Ultimately the question is: If I create a 600gb RAID 10 across 6 300gb drives, will the remaining 300gb be evenly distributed across the drives, and will this space be available to the 320 controller for use as spare area?

Does anyone have any experience with 3rd party SSD drives in any of the Dell Blade range?

I'm not prepared to pay dell £1000 for a 100GB SSD drive, when I can pick up 2x 256GB drives for £800!

I've read this : Dell SSD options and 3rd party SSDs in Dell hardware but it doesn't seem to mention anything about the raid controller, or if the new drives will simply slot into the SAS/SATA enclosure.

Previous PERC controllers could all be managed/monitored by the LSI MegaCLI tools. The latest release of those tools does not appear to recognize my H700 card:

$ sudo /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -adpCount 

Controller Count: 0.

Are there any options aside from installing the massive OMSA suite?

-Ben