Summary

Dell Technologies’ newest RAID controller iteration, PERC 12, which is using the new Broadcom SAS4116W series chip, has increased support capabilities, including 24 Gbps SAS drives, increased cache memory speed to 3200 Mhz, 16-lane host bus type, and, most notably, only one front controller that supports both NVMe and SAS.

PERC 12 card management applications include Comprehensive Embedded Management (CEM), Dell OpenManage Storage Management, The Human Interface Infrastructure (HII) configuration utility, and the PERC command line interface (CLI). These applications enable you to manage and configure the RAID system, create and manage multiple disk groups, control and monitor multiple RAID systems, and provide online maintenance.

Introduction

As storage demands expand and processing loads grow, RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) data protection has become a necessary staple for proper enterprise storage management. Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) provides a RAID solution that is powerful and easy-to-manage for enterprise storage data protection needs.

Dell Technologies’ newest RAID controller iteration, PERC 12, has increased support capabilities: 24 Gbps SAS drives, an increased cache memory speed of 3200 Mhz, 16-lane host bus type, and a single front controller that supports both NVMe and SAS.

PERC12 PowerEdge Support

H965i Adapter controller

PERC12 Adapter Card adds an Active Heat Sink (Fan) on the controller, providing additional cooling capabilities, to ensure that the controller is always running at optimum temperature and does not compromise on performance because of overheating. The controller connects directly on the motherboard using a PCIe slot and uses a SlimLine connector (or a NearStack connector) for the SAS/NVMe interfaces.

H965i Front controller

PERC12 Front Card upgrades the hardware design when compared to the previous generation controller. It combines SAS and NVMe support with a single card, eliminating the need to use different controllers for SAS and NVMe supported servers. The controller has a SlimLine connector (or a NearStack connector) for both PCIe and SAS/NVMe interfaces.

H965i MX controller

PERC12 MX Card is designed specifically for MX chassis servers and includes an energy pack similar to other form factors for power backup in case of power loss. This helps ensure proper customer cache offload to avoid any data loss. The controller connects directly on the motherboard using a PCIe slot and uses a SlimLine connector (or a NearStack connector) for the SAS/NVMe interfaces.

PERC 12 Supported Operating Systems

Windows Server

• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022

Linux

• RHEL 8.6
• RHEL 9.0
• SLES 15 SP4
• Ubuntu 22.04

VMware

• ESXi 7.0 U3
• ESXi 8.0

See Dell Technologies Enterprise operating systems support for a list of supported operating systems by specific server for the PERC 12 cards.

Hardware RAID Performance

NVMe Key RAID Metrics (PERC11 / PERC12)

Table 1.  Latency / Rebuild

Key NVMe RAID 5 Metrics (PERC11 / PERC12)

Table 2.  IOPS / Bandwidth

Key SAS RAID Metrics (PERC10 / PERC11 / PERC12)

Table 3.  IOPS / Latency Reduction During Rebuild

Key SAS RAID Metrics (PERC10 / PERC11 / PERC12)

Table 4.  IOPS / Bandwidth

Conclusion

Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 12 or PERC 12 continues to innovate by supporting hardware RAID for NVMe drives. The PERC 12 series consists of PERC H965i Adapter, PERC H965i Front, and PERC H965i MX.