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We think about replacing our Dell PowerEdge T100 (2009) with a Dell PowerEdge T330 for our small business. Up to 15 clients are using the MSSql Server, some fileshares and printers. The database size is about 7G with little writes.

We think about using SSDs and HDDs (Raid 1 + Raid 1) with a PERC H330 RAID controller.

Buying SSDs at Dell is very expensive and that's why we want to buy them separately.

Is it possible to use some Samsung Evo 850 Pro with this RAID controller? Are they stable in a RAID 1 setup or is the RAID crashing (without hardware failure)? I read about leaving unpartitioned space to over-provisioning them but is there anything else to think about?

Our server will not have heavy loads, so I think this consumer SSDs fit our requirements, but they need to be reliable for some years :) .

Is this a good way to save some money or will we regret it someday?

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  • You can probably get away with it.
    – ewwhite
    Feb 21, 2016 at 13:18
  • Another thing to keep in mind is monitoring. I used check_openmanage to monitor Dell servers, and storage that was not Dell certified always came back as a warning.
    – lsd
    Feb 21, 2016 at 15:33
  • It's been awhile but when I used aftermarket SSDs in PowerEdge servers, the RAID controllers would continually flash the alarm LEDs. IIRC, Dell firmware has a whitelist of supported storage devices. If you use something not on the list, you'll see warnings constantly on the RAID controller about the storage being faulty. They worked fine though.
    – user143703
    Feb 21, 2016 at 23:39
  • Is this storage device whitelist public anywhere?
    – maxschaf
    Feb 22, 2016 at 11:09
  • for more than a year now we use Samsung SSD SM863 in our T330 and we did not have any problems. There is a note that disks are not from dell, but they work fine.
    – maxschaf
    Sep 20, 2017 at 10:50

1 Answer 1

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I use PowerEdge servers with a lot of variety of HDDs.

I prefer using 2 or 3 Dell original system drives a server comes with to host the VM environment and then add large SATA HDDs like WD Golds 8TB+ or 2.5" high capacity ones to be used for guests, according to my needs and requirements.

There is no problem whatsoever in such a setup. There is no warning and no alarm. 3rd party HDDs worked excellently in all my setups in various RAID configurations.

Samsung Evo 850 Pros are reliable enough but were not build for server environments, so the only problem you can have is their faster ware-out.

High capacity server SSDs are extremely expensive so many prefer alternatives, but the original SAS ones do offer features such as advanced error correction, data integrity technology and high signal quality on the cable or backplane.

So, in the end, the choice is all about needs vs costs.

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