Boy, do I know how to jump in with both feet! Then I come crawling for help. It is my sincere desire that others may learn from my rookie questions.

I purchased a 2U rack mount server from SuperMicro. Some don't like the name as if it is not as good as a Dell, but Dell's use SuperMicro parts. LOL! True story. At any rate it is a 4xCPU Intel XEON w/2mb cache, 24GB of ECC DDR400 RAM, a built-in RAID, etc. It only has twin Seagate Barracuda 750MB drives and not even NL drives. So sad. I plan on adding 6 4GB RE4 drives (6GB/s SATA III) RAID 1. Lastly it has dual redundant power supplies.

This box will be used to host up to 30 Virtuozzo 4.7 containers. I want 12GB of HDD space after OS config. But honestly I don't want to use the built-in RAID controller. I want a server with POWER!!!

The problem is that with an external controller I don't know how to add stack HDD's. The LSI 9207-8i doesn't explain. There is an OS tool s thay I cannot remember but I insist on the external controller anyway.

Have I made sense and provided enough OS info? I can handle the dual proc XEON's and Opteron's with two or three drives. but this mega server... I am sure that healthcare.gov will run just fine but I need 12GB of HDD per mirror.

Lastly, the unit came with a SuperMicro AOC SG-I2 1GB NIC (I don't know why) and a SIMSO+, which is a KVM over IP something or another. I already use an external KVM over IP that just needs a cable.

So here's the bottom line. 1. How do I stripe three drives together for 12GB per mirror and 2. Why would I need 4 1GB NIC ports?

Thank you so much in advance!!!!!!

Oh man, I think you and I are in the same boat. I just bought this supermicro X7QCE too.

Firstly are you sure you're not getting your GB/MB/TB's mixed up on your hard drives " 6 4GB RE4 drives"....don't you mean "6 4"TB" RE4 drives"?

Anyway, I'm trying to hardware raid 10 4x re4 2TB drives (using adaptec 5405z card) for a total of 3.6TB. Well I try to install centos 6.4 and I get this message:

You are using a GPT bootdisk on a non-EFI system. This may not work. Depending on your bios's Support for booting from GPT disks.

Well, i'm finding out that maybe our motherboards don't support anything over 2tb total. hmmm... I tried to use the onboard adaptec raid and it maxed me out at 2TB in that utitlity. So I'm thinking that's the issue here. NOT COOL!

can anyone else chime in on this on how we might be able to get more disk space managed on these servers? Maybe updating the bios or finding another way?

I just spoke with LSI and their 9201-8i controller in RAID 5 will yields approx 20TB of storage space. They recommended an online RAID calculator for more answers but recommended against RAID 10. The SuperMicro 2U case requires a low profile controller that will POST on its own regardless of the X7QCE BIOS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...e=y#turntodone

I hope this helps.

Bob

Thanks for the info Bob,

I have a low profile adaptec 5405z PCI-E raid controller installed on this X7QCE and it posts just fine and builds the arrays perfectly 4x 2tb raid10 (4tb total). But this supermicro system isn't really doing anything with it. It acknowledges the raid and hard drive size in the bios but that's about it. It won't boot centos at all after I install. So Then I decided to just install centos 6.4 64bit using all default centos installation settings and partitions, without raid on a small 160GB hard drive connected directly to the motherboard just to see what happens. Again, I get the blinking cursor at boot. I don't know if these X7QCE servers are even able to process the centos booter. Are you able to boot to Centos bob from any hard drive on this particular supermicro server we're both using? I see you use centos 5x. I'm trying to keep it version 6 to keep things up to date but maybe that won't work out.

I also found this compatibility chart for our server. Stops at centos 5.1. I wonder if this is up to date or not.
http://www.supermicro.com/support/re...patibility.cfm

Also, Bob,

Do you know if this card is able to post without MB bios? based on the specs, how would you know?
http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support...aid/sas-5405z/

Thanks!

I emailed Newegg and was informed that the controller can only handle 2GB drives. Not what LSI implied. Nothing has been said about not supporting Centos 6.x. It would b ridiculous for that not to be the case. I haven't even tried installing it yet but I have 6 drives new, in the box waiting to go in. I am concerned no with what you have discovered.

You mean, 2TB right? The 5405 controller i have is doing fine with 4TB. I'm finding this card is working out well for me for the time being. Maybe give the adaptec 5405 a shot.

I don't know what it is, but it seems that it is a bother for some tech support agents to answer questions of customers that have been with them for years. Jason at LSI smugly reported that he didn't know what I was told that the 9207 would support RAID 0, 1 and 10 -- but not 5. And not 4GB drives. Maybe 3TB or 2TB. Which is it Jason? No one makes a 3TB drives that I am aware of.

The card recommended is the LSI 9260 or 9266 but when asked if there were any issues with Centos 6.x he said that he hadn't heard of anything. A really supportive answer. Finally when asked if it supports Virtuozzo 4.7 again "I haven't heard of anything..." Frustrated with half answers that was like pulling teeth I asked if they had a knowledge base and I was given the link but told, "I don't think you'll find anything on Virtuozzo."

This was not a very good way of LSI to represent their product. Normally I wouldn't mention the manufacturer and I hope that the moderator leaves it in. When one spends a lot of money n a server, over a $1k on HDD's and needs a solid RAID controller complete, accurate answers are important.

Here's a 4tb. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=REG&A=details

It needs to be supported by Parallels Virtuozzo. I cannot find the Parallels Virtuozzo hardware for Linux compatibility list.

I am very disappointed with Parallels. I have been trying to get the list of approved RAID controllers and have failed. They keep asking questions that are not related to my question. Is there a reader perhaps who as the link to the HCL (hardware compatibility list) or the approved RAID controllers for Virtuozzo 4.7 for Linux?

As a refresher, I am attempting to deploy a quad XEON processor with 24GB of RAM and 20TB of storage as a Virtuozzo server.

Thank you in advance and Happy Holidays!