Overview - Dell PowerEdge VRTX User Manual

Overview

The Dell Shared PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 8 card installed on the PowerEdge VRTX system supports Single
Root Input Output Virtualization (SR-IOV). This feature allows multiple systems to share available hardware resources.
In the PowerEdge VRTX system, the Shared PERC 8 card allows four server modules to access a local shared storage.
Each server module's operating system loads a Virtual Function (VF) driver that allows the server module to
communicate with the Shared PERC 8 firmware. The server module can then be mapped to either a single Virtual Disk
(VD) or multiple VDs that are located on the shared storage. Therefore, from a single server module, you can only access
the VDs that are mapped to that server module.
The characteristics of a Shared PERC 8 card are as follows:
• Compatible with serial-attached SCSI (SAS) 2.0 providing up to 6 Gb/sec throughput.
• Supports Dell-qualified SAS-hard drives and SAS solid-state drives (SSDs).
NOTE: Mixing disks of different speeds (7,200 rpm, 10,000 rpm, or 15,000 rpm) and bandwidth (3 Gbps or 6
Gbps) while maintaining the same drive type (SAS) and technology (HDD or SSD) is supported. Mixing hard
drives and SSDs within a virtual disk is not supported.
NOTE: SATA drives are not supported.
• Offers RAID control capabilities, which include support for RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60.
NOTE: Non-RAID drives are not supported.
• Provides reliability, I/O virtualization, and fault-tolerant disk subsystem management.
• Controller configuration is only accessible through the Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC).
NOTE: The Shared PERC 8 card does have the Option ROM (OP-ROM).
NOTE: Booting from a shared storage is not supported. You can only boot from the storage located on the
server module.
• Contains a unique firmware image that supports SR-IOV using an operating system device driver that is loaded
on a server module.
• Supports up to four available VF drivers to map server modules to VDs.
Table 1. Shared PERC 8 Card Capabilities
Specification
RAID levels
Enclosure per port
Processor
Battery backup unit
Non-volatile cache
Cache memory
Shared PERC 8 Card Capabilities
0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60
Not applicable
Dell Adapter SAS RAID-on-Chip, 8-Port with LSI 2208 Chipset
Yes
Yes
1 GB DDR3, 1333 MHz
1
5