Running RHEL 8 on Dell R710/610 via Raid Controller Retrofit

/ Christopher Paquin

A while back, I wrote a blog post that outlined a process of injecting deprecated storage controller drivers into RHEL 8 via a Driver Update Disk.

In a nutshell, this process allows you to install RHEL 8 on the R710/R610 (11th Gen)

This process worked fine, unless you wanted to yum update your server. Rather than attempt to find a repeatable process of injecting drivers prior to updating, I decided to upgrade my RAID controller to one that was supported.

My 11th generation, R710, came with a Perc H700. Identified below.

# lspci -knn | grep 'RAID bus controller'
03:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator] [1000:0079] (rev 05)

Based on feedback from friends and co-workers. I purchased a PERC H330, which I believe ships with the 13th Gen Dell rackmount servers.

These cards can be found for pretty cheap on Ebay. Make sure that you order one with the correct bracket based on your needs (full-height/half-height).

Plus you will need 2 new cables. You are looking for SFF8643 to SFF8087 (mini SAS HD to mini SAS). They are also cheap and can be found on Ebay/Amazon

Output from one of my Dell R710s. Note I did not remove the original card. 

# lspci -knn | grep 'RAID bus controller'
03:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator] [1000:0079] (rev 05)
05:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3108 [Invader] [1000:005d] (rev 02)

Afterthoughts

I’ve only performed this swap on one of my R710s, I have 2 more as well as 2 R610s. Below are are few things to consider if you are looking to perform a similar upgrade

  1. Take a hard look at your existing server. Do you need to purchase a full sized pci card or a mini card? This may likely be the case on the 1u servers and may be a blocker for you
  2. Remove the old card. The server does not quite like having a raid controller installed without cables.
  3. If you buy a full-sized pci card, make sure you get one with the bracket that you need (full height vs. half height vs. no bracket)
  4. You might want to find a cable with 90 degree connectors for the backplane. Mine fit fine on the 710, but I have heard that the 90 degree connector is best for 1U servers.
  5. You may want to consider upgrading your 11th generation server to an 12th generation Dell, R720/R620s can be purchased relatively cheaply and the RAM and disks in your 11th gen will work in a newer 12th generation. (note that the 11th gen Dell CPUs are socket LGA1366, while the 12th gen Dells utilize socket LGA2011)

Additional Resources

https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/considerations_in_adopting_rhel_8/hardware-enablement_considerations-in-adopting-rhel-8#removed-adapters_hardware-enablement

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