“Almost decided against it? But why,” you may be asking. I’ll tell you why. I overlooked a core detail – you can add RAID controllers in PCI-E slots. What’s that mean to me? Let’s back up just a little bit, keeping in mind that hindsight is 20/20 and I’ve been spoiled by desktop hardware.
Launched in 2009, the R710 is a part of Dell’s 11th generation of servers. As is common now, and was equally common then, hardware manufacturers release base versions of their equipment and give customers the option to upgrade either at the time of order or later as their needs grow. 2009 was also on the cusp of “very large” (2TB or greater) hard drives. Back then, drives that size weren’t all that affordable, especially in SAS versions. They existed, and RAID controllers were released to accommodate them, but that was either at great cost and/or became more widely used later on.