Quick Specs

• Enclosures per port Not applicable
• Cache: No
• RAID Level: 0, 1, and 10
• Non-RAID: Yes
• PCIe: Gen 4
• Processor: Broadcom RAID-onchip, SAS4016 chipset
• Battery Backup: No
• Max no of VDs in RAID mode: 4
• Max no of disk groups: 4
• Max no of VDs per disk group: 4
• Hot-swap devices supported: Yes
• Drive sector size supported: 512B, 512e, and 4Kn
• Storage Boot Support: UEFI-only

• Supported Drives: 6 Gbps SATA
• 22.5 Gbps SAS, 12 Gbps SAS, and 6 Gbps SATA/SAS
• NVMe Gen3 (8 GT/s) and Gen4 (16 GT/s)
• Max SAS/SATA disks: 16 drives per controller
• w/ SAS Expander: Limited by platform offerings
• Max NVMe drives: 8 drives per controller
• w/ PCIe Switch Expander: Limited by platform offerings
• Max physical disks: 16 SAS/SATA 24 / 32 NVMe

PERC Rules & Limitations

Dell Technologies PowerEdge RAID Controller 12 or PERC 12 is a series of RAID disk array controllers developed by Dell for its PowerEdge servers.

• The PERC 12 controller tools such as PERCCLI2, drivers, and firmware are not backward-compatible with previous versions of PERC controllers.
• Mixing disks of different speed (7,200 RPM, 10,000 RPM, or 15,000 RPM) and bandwidth (6 Gbps, 12 Gbps, or 24 Gbps) while maintaining the same drive type (SAS or SATA) and technology (HDD or SSD) is supported.
• PERC 12 controllers support only single SCSI LUN and single NVMe namespace devices. Multi-LUN and MultiNamespace devices are not supported.
• Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives are not supported on PERC 12 controllers.
• Mixing NVMe drives with SAS and SATA is not supported. Also, mixing HDD and SSD in a virtual disk is not supported.
• PERC 12 controller is supported in only UEFI mode as boot controller. (H965e is not supported as a boot controller)

Summary of RAID levels

Summary of RAID levels Following is a list of the RAID levels supported by the PERC 12 series of cards:

• RAID 0

  Uses disk striping to provide high data throughput, especially for large files in an environment that requires no data redundancy.

• RAID 1

  Uses disk mirroring so that data written to one physical disk is simultaneously written to another physical disk. RAID 1 is good for small databases or other applications that require small capacity and complete data redundancy.

• RAID 5

  Uses disk striping and parity data across all physical disks (distributed parity) to provide high data throughput and data redundancy, especially for small random access.

• RAID 6

  Is an extension of RAID 5 and uses an additional parity block. RAID 6 uses block-level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks. RAID 6 provides protection against double disk failures, and failures while a single disk is rebuilding. If you are using only one array, deploying RAID 6 is more effective than deploying a hot spare disk.

• RAID 10

  Is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1, uses disk striping across mirrored disks. It provides high data throughput and complete data redundancy.

• RAID 50

  Is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 5 where a RAID 0 array is striped across RAID 5 elements. RAID 50 requires at least six disks.

• RAID 60

  Is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 6 where a RAID 0 array is striped across RAID 6 elements. RAID 60 requires at least eight disks.