Dell PowerEdge S100 / S300 Linux Software RAID Driver

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How do I use the Dell PowerEdge S100 and S300 Software RAID controllers with Linux operating systems?

You cannot use the Dell PowerEdge S100 and S300 PERC RAID controllers under Linux. These devices only works with MS-Windows operating system as they are software only RAID (fake RAID device).

You need to disable RAID storage – the S100/S300 controllers by visiting BIOS settings.

You can now use standard software RAID provided by Linux. See how to set RAID1 using two disks under Linux.

Another option is add-on hardware RAID card to the server such as PERC 6/E SAS controller with RAID or SAS 6I/R SAS controller with RAID.

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. He has worked with global clients and in various industries, including IT, education, defense and space research, and the nonprofit sector. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+.

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8 comment

  1. Hello,
    I bought a crappy Dell T310. It seems the PERC S300 RAID Controller doesn’t work. Even if I disabled the RAID function from the RAID BIOS.
    I called Dell and the said ” It works only under windows ”
    If anyone has any information to make this controller works.

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  5. A step is missing (possibly depending on the server), you have to disable the sas card and move host devices to the onboard sata ports. With the standard R410+sas config (at least, not sure on other servers) this is a show stopper you lose sas support and need a cable kit to attach sata drives.

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  6. SWRAID linux drivers are not open source –> therfore are not supported on the PERC S300. The most efficient way to get around this is to install a PERC H200. Disabling the PERC S300 does not work if you just want to disable it to work around it, compiling the driver will not work as the source is not available and if you still want to compile your own, you will be missing some hearder files; therefore it will fail. In any case, get the PERC H200 installed and avoid the downtime.

    Note: The PERC S300 is intended/supported only on Windows only. I verfified this on the Dell website.

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  7. We have tons of Dell server and the following works perfectly with RHEL / Suse / Red Hat / Debian etc:

    PERC 6/E SAS controller with RAID
PERC 6/I SAS controller with RAID
SAS 5/E controller with RAID
SAS 6I/R SAS controller with RAID
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