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11 Configuring RAID in a Dell workstation | 1.0
3 Platforms and Supported Controllers
The workstations used in this guide are Precision 5820 Tower, Precision 7820 Tower, and Precision 7920
Tower. The Precision 7820 Tower and Precision 7920 Tower systems support processors from the Intel Xeon
Processor Scalable Family and ship with the C621 (C620 Family) chipset. The Precision 5820 Tower system
supports processors from the Intel Xeon Processor Workstation Family and contain the C422 chipset. The
below table provides details on the different storage controllers and the platform support for each.
Controllers supported in each platform
RAID Controller
5820 Tower
7820 Tower
7920 Tower
Intel
®
RSTe Yes (Integrated) Yes (Integrated) Yes (Integrated)
Intel
®
VMD with Intel
®
VROC pass-
through
Yes (Integrated) Yes (Integrated) Yes (Integrated)
Intel
®
VROC Standard Optional Optional Optional
Broadcom MegaRAID® SAS 9440-8i Optional Optional Optional
Broadcom MegaRAID® SAS 9460-16i Optional Optional Optional
*Intel VROC requires optional VROC Key for NVMe RAID support
3.1 Intel
®
RSTe
Precision platforms support Intel
®
RSTe to connect to SATA drives, and it allows creating RAID configurations
on SATA drives.
The Intel® RSTe controller is integrated into the Intel
®
C621 (C620 Series) chipset on the 7820 and 7920
Tower, and the Intel
®
C422 chipset on the 5820 Tower. The 5820 and 7820 Tower have six ports attached to
the integrated SATA controller for SATA drives and two additional ports dedicated for Optical drives. The
7920 Tower has eight ports attached to the Integrated SATA controller through two four port miniSAS HD
connectors and one independent port dedicated for the Slim Optical drive location.
Within BIOS setup, this controller can be configured to support either RAID Mode, AHCI, or ATA Mode. RAID
is only available when the controller is set to RAID Mode. When configured for RAID, the controller supports
Software RAID with RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5.
3.2 Intel
®
VROC
NVMe drives can be directly connected to the CPU PCIe slots using the Dell Ultra-Speed Quad or Dell Ultra-
Speed Duo add-in cards, or installed into the front FlexBays with an optional PCIe High-Speed Backplane
(HSBP). Intel® VMD is the storage controller used by drives directly attached to the CPU. Intel
®
VROC is the
software stack that manages drives attached to Intel
®
VMD. The integrated Intel
®
VROC pass-through allows
for NVMe SSDs to be installed onto CPU PCIe connections in JBOD mode only. The Intel
®
VROC Standard
upgrade allows drives connected to Intel
®
VMD to be configured into RAID 0, RAID1, or RAID10 arrays.
There are three Intel
®
VMD controllers on the Precision 5820 Tower and Precision 7820 Tower platforms.
There are six Intel
®
VMD controllers on the Precision 7920 Tower platform when two processors are installed.