Delle PowerEdge R410 + EMC2 CLARiiON KTN-STL4

The enclosure you purchased is a DAE2P EMC or Dell|EMC enclosure and can only be used to daisy chain off of an EMC CX3 or EMC CX4-series SAN. Other than that you probably won't be able to use the enclosure at all. The drives in the enclosure are EMC-formatted fiber channel drives (not SAS drives), which means that you probably won't be able to move them to a non-EMC disk enclosure and use them there either.

You could look on Ebay or so for a fairly cheap EMC (or Dell|EMC) CX3-10. This would be compatible, but you'll need to make sure you get it with at least the original 5 first drives in the first disk enclosure as these contain the operating system (software called the "flare").

You'll then also need the HSSDC2-to-HSSDC2 cables (2 of them) to connect this enclosure to the original disk enclosure from the CX3-10.

Hello pkirklewski,

As Dev mgr has stated the only way to get that to work is that you will need to get the processor enclosure for either a CX3-xx or CX4-xx system along with making sure that you have the Flare drives as well for the enclosure.  Without having the processor enclosure you will not be able to get the drives seen by the server & ESXi.  The HSSDC cables can connect only the Processor enclosure to an DAE ( Disk Array Enclosure ) or another DAE, as the DAE are not made to connect to a server.  The processor enclosure on a CX SAN has either FC or ISCSi connections on them that you will be able to connect to the R410.  

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks for helping me.

It looks like we are in deep <ADMIN NOTE: Substitute Characters removed as per terms of use>. The guy we bought the enclosures from insisted that he had tested the enclosures and drives etc. We then concluded it's all we need. Now (after we complained) he insists that we do not need the FLARE drives and we can present the array to the server without them. We asked him to share the method with us (still waiting).

We have bought the enclousers for around $300 (second hand) but the FLARE drives are not so chip so I don't think we will be able to afford them.

The other question is: I do not have any FC card or GBIC port in my PE R410 server.

I also can't see any space for the extension card.

There are also only 2 Ehernet ports in the back of the server, one being the DRAC port.

Would that mean that if I use the ISCSI method of connection my speed will be limited to 1Gbps ?

How would you resolve that ?

I don't know of any fiber channel cards with HSSDC or HSSDC2 connectors, so I'm not sure how you'd ever connect the enclosure directly to a server.

The person you bought the enclosure from probably tested the unit connected to a CX3 or CX4 SAN and found it to be fully operational (and then removed it from that SAN again).

If you do opt to get a CX3-10 (or CX3-20, CX3-40, CX3-80, CX4-120, CX4-240, CX4-480 or CX4-960), it should have at least the Storage Processor Enclosure (SPE) and the Disk Array Enclosure with the OS (DAE-OS). The SPE contains the actual controllers, and the DAE-OS has 15 drive bays, of which the first 5 drives contain the flare (these typically have a sticker across them as well to let you know that these contain the flare).

Depending on the model of the CX-array and/or which expansion modules (option on the CX4-series) it has, it could be iSCSI and/or Fiber Channel.

If you want to use iSCSI, you would indeed need to use an ethernet card, iSCSI HBA or CNA. Depending on the SAN/expansion module in the SAN, iSCSI could be 1Gbit or 10Gbit.

Hm, what about the speed then ?

iSCSI HBA would leave us with 1Gbps speed is that anough for smooth disk operations ?

That depends on your needs. If needed, you could put 2 Gigabit ethernet switches between the server and the array.

You'd use a setup like this:

Storage Processor A (first controller on the CX array (EMC calls it a storage processor):

iSCSI port 0: 192.168.100.1 -> To switch 1

iSCSI port 1: 192.168.101.1 -> To switch 2

Storage Processor B:

iSCSI port 0: 192.168.100.2 -> To switch 1

iSCSI port 1: 192.168.101.2 -> To switch 2

The switches should be half way decent switches. Staying within the Dell brand, you could look for some used PowerConnect 5424's or 6224's (avoid 5200 and 5300 series, or anything with a lower number). A used 5424 should be fairly affordable.

If you want to skip the switch part and go direct connect, I highly recommend you get at least a quad port NIC to add to your server (2 ports to storage processor A and 2 ports to storage processor B, but you'll have to use 4 subnets in that case (e.g. 192.168.100-103)).

Hi there, I would like to know what specific kind of STORAGE PROCESSOR i will be able to use on my KTN STL4. Please\

Hello dakrvs,

What you will need is to get a EMC CX storage processor enclosure to connect the enclosures (ex: CX700, CX3-20 through CX3-80, CX4-120 through CX4-960.  Without having the processor unit I haven’t seen anyone be able to use the EMC DAE as a JBOD.  

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

I think this can be done by using the following:

LSI 4GB 2 PORT FIBRE HBA PCI-e x8 LSI7204EP

and

SFP to HSSDC2 cable

The HSSDC2 connector connects to the KTN-STL4 and SFP connects to the HBA card.

Try it out and let us know how it went.....

I tried this setup and the LSI controller doesn't recognize any drives attatched.  I don't know anything about FC though.  Is one FC cable enough or do I need two in a send/receive setup.  I also tried plugging the the cable into the PRI port and EXT port with no success. Do I need to setup anything via serial to get configured to work? 

Once a time, i tried to use these enclosures in my lab. I used SFP to HSSDC2 cable and qlogic qle2562 (salvaged from data domain). Qlogic bios can detects and can perform diagnostics on drives. In windows, system detectcs disks but cant get able to initialize and use. So i tried in centos. With multipathing, system detects drives and can uses disks. I got 100Mb/s write performance with 1tb sata disks. But when i tried to mdraid with raid 10, i get 15Mb/s. May be I'am using wrong raid setup, not mastered with mdraid. In summary, its usable under linux with multipathing. By the way vmware also detect disks but cant format them.

Edit: Forgot to mention, you need to convert sector size 520byte to 512byte. I used a binary from Michael:

https://micha.freeshell.org/scsi/index.html

Also you can use sg3_utils.

The Dell PowerEdge R410 is a powerful and ultra-dense 2-socket 1U server that offers the performance of Intel Xeon processor 5500 and 5600 series, DDR3 memory, the availability of up to four hard drives 3.5÷, and exceptional value.

Clariion (styled CLARiiON) is a discontinued SAN disk array manufactured and sold by EMC Corporation, it occupied the entry-level and mid-range of EMC's SAN disk array products.

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