I have a Dell PowerEdge Server with a HW RAID controller and a 12Gbs HBA SAS Storage adapter. I'm are looking to add more storage for backup/archiving purposes. I'm looking at using the MD1200 or MD1220 to support that role as opposed to a NAS (due to limited/throttled network bandwidth in our corporate office).
If I connect the MD12XX to the server will the disks show up as Just a Bunch Of Disks; allowing me to configure it as another RAID array from the server? Or does the MD12XX need to be configured with its own RAID controller in order to be accessed single logical disk?
If the answer is the former, is there a performance benefit for the MD12XX having its own RAID controller?
The purpose of this server is for computation of large data sets and software development as opposed to hosting cloud based web services or virtual machines.