I have a server with a Dell PERC H830 SAS RAID adapter already in it. It's hooked up to two non-Dell RAID enclosure right nows. I'm looking to replace one of those enclosures with an MD1200.
The problem is Dell says the MD1200 only works with the PERC H810 SAS RAID card. This makes no sense whatsoever. The H830 is 12Gb/s SAS. The MD1200 is 6Gb/s SAS. SAS is backwards compatible by design so there's no reason the H830 won't step down to the slower speed of the MD1200. Indeed, the enclosures currently hooked up to the H830 are both 6Gb/s SAS arrays so it will work.
Dell is giving me a bunch of mumbo-jumbo on this. They claim they need to know what server the H830 is in before they can answer the question. What does that have to do with anything? The MD1200 only sees the H830. It doesn't know anything at all about the server nor can it know. If the H830 works in the server then that's all that should matter. It's not like I'm keeping a secret about the server but more me being offended by the attempt to obfuscate the issue.
Further, the H830 is little more than a re-badged LSI/Avago SAS RAID card. I contacted them and asked if their equivalent SAS3108-based controller (which is identical to the H830) will work with an MD1200. They said absolutely.
So will someone at Dell please speak intelligently about this? If it's just that Dell hasn't tested an H830 + MD1200 combo then say so. Don't say "it won't work" if you don't know it won't work.
And if nobody at Dell has tested an MD1200 with an H830...why haven't you? It's not like this is an impossible combination a customer might want.
Somebody at Dell please speak up before I go to another vendor.