Dell Emc Powervault Md12xx Enclosure Direct Attached Storage User Guide

Dell EMC PowerVault MD12XX Enclosure
Support Matrix

EMC PowerVault MD12XX Enclosure Direct Attached Storage

Notes, cautions, and warnings

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your product.
CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid the problem.
WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death.

Introduction

When an enclosure is used for server expansion and is connected to servers, RAID array expansions or other enclosures, it is referred to as a storage enclosure. This document provides information about supported software, firmware, and hardware for Dell Storage MD1200 or MD1220 when used as a storage enclosure.
NOTE: This Support Matrix contains the latest compatibility and interoperability information. This document supersedes all other documentation information.
Topics:

• Changes in version A08
  Changes in version A08
• Added the Dell Shared PERC 8 controller to the list of supported controllers

Dell EMC storage enclosure rules

This section contains consideration rules for the Dell EMC Storage enclosures.
Table 1. Dell EMC Storage Enclosure Rules

Maximum of 192 drives are supported with premium feature key activation. For a system without premium features activation, the physical disk drive limit is 120.

Supported storage enclosure firmware

When using MD1200/MD1220 Storage enclosures, Dell EMC recommends two Enclosure Management Modules (EMMs) when in a JBOD environment directly connected to a server using a PERC controller. When connected to a RBOD MD3 array or daisy-chained to another MD1200/MD1220, a dual-EMM configuration is required.
Both EMMs must be running the same firmware versions. EMMs do not automatically synchronize firmware versions, you must update each EMM individually.
Table 2. Storage Enclosure Management Module Firmware Release History

Supported controllers

The following controllers are supported with the Dell EMC MD12XX storage enclosures:

• Dell EMC PERC H800 (for 11th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers)
• Dell EMC PERC H810 (for 12th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers)
• Dell EMC 6 Gbps SAS HBA (for 12th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers)
• Dell Shared PERC 8 (for 12th and 13th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge VRTX servers) Supported HBA drivers and firmware can be obtained from the Dell EMC Support website: https://www.dell.com/support/ To determine if the preceding controllers are supported for specific host servers, go to the Dell EMC PowerEdge RAID Controller website: https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln292279/list-of-poweredge-raid-controller-perc-typesfor-dell-emc-systems

NOTE: If you are migrating to a 13th generation server from a 12th generation server with MD1200/MD1220 JBOD enclosures and PERC H810 controllers, you have support for controller and JBOD data migration. However, you do not have support for Dell EMC’s 13G systems and storage management applications. Configuration and management of the H810 controller in 13G servers must rely on the preboot utility Ctrl-R and the PERC CLI utility. The PERC H810 is not available at Point-of-Sale for 13th generation servers. The PERC H800 has reached end-of-life and is no longer available for purchase.

Supported Dell EMC RBODs

Table 3. Supported Dell EMC RBODs 

Supported physical disk drives

Refer to the specific Dell EMC storage enclosure Drivers and Downloads section on support.dell.com for the latest available physical disk firmware.
NOTE:

• Drives with 12 GBps interface speed down-train to 6 GBps when installed in the enclosure. The following are not supported on MD1200/MD1220 enclosures:
• 4Kn sector size
• Encrypted SSD drives (SED-SSD)
• Dell EMC recommends that RAID 10 must not be used with 8 TB drives or larger because of extended rebuild or reconstruct time requirements when dealing with larger drives. RAID 6 is recommended for these very large capacity drives.

Table 4. Supported Physical disk drive Models for Dell EMC PowerVault MD1200/MD1220

Table 4. Supported Physical disk drive Models for Dell EMC PowerVault MD1200/MD1220 (continued)

Supported cabling configurations

NOTE: Only 0.6 m, 2 m, and 4 m mini-SAS cables are supported.
There are a a large number of storage topologies, because servers are capable of hosting multiple PCIe Dell EMC SAS 6 Gbps HBAs and the MD12XX have multiple SAS ports with the ability to daisy-chain the JBODs. Dell EMC has not tested and validated all the combinations. Here are some storage configurations that are supported by Dell EMC.

Figure 1. Standalone Server and MD12XX in Daisy chain configuration

Figure 2. Standalone Server with MPIO configuration

Figure 3. 2 Servers each with 1 HBA in failover cluster configuration with 4 JBODs Daisy chained

Figure 4. 2 Servers, each with 2 HBAs in failover cluster configuration with 4 JBODs

Figure 5. 2 Servers each with 2 HBAs in failover cluster configuration with 2 JBODs and MP

Supported cabling configurations

September 2022
Rev. A08