Is the PERC H700 controller compatible with a Poweredge 1950 / 1950 III?

I am interested in breathing new life in my old Poweredge 1950/1950 III servers and was wondering if the PERC H700 controllers are compatible.

Has anyone attempted such an upgrade and has it been successful?

Cheers,
Michael.

Answer

Yes, this works...

No, it's not a good idea.

You're talking about a server generation that was mainly relevant from 2006-2008. As such, the drive technologies have changed, backplane speeds have increased and practical considerations like power utilization, (low) memory capacity and CPU performance make it a bad platform for investing any resources.

To use a newer RAID controller in this server, you'll need:

• The new controller.


• Firmware updates.


• SAS adapter cables to go from older SAS SFF-8484 connectors to SAS SFF-8087.



• Understand that SATA drives will probably link at 1.5Gbps, not 3.0Gbps or 6.0Gbps.