topic Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size in Disk Enclosures

RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Ricardo A. Mari — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:31:20 GMT

Hello, I wish to know if I could assign more space than 514072 Mb to a single Logical Drive on a single Array.
I would like to create only one disk in W2K

I had to create two Arrays and two logical disk
and in W2K a single spanned volume across the
two disks.

My configuration is Proliant 8500 (W2K Advance Server Sp4). RA4000 (firmware ver. 2.58) with 10 disks of 72,8 Gb, 15K rpm

Thank you very much
Ricardo

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Greg Carlson — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:36:21 GMT

Ricardo,

There were some limitations with earlier versions of the ACU, What version of ACU were you using?

Try version 7.15.19.0
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/19658.html

Ciao,
Greg

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Ricardo A. Mari — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 13:03:35 GMT

Greg,

I installed the new version of ACU and the comment is that certain operating systems do not support logical units greater than 502 Gb.

Thank you very much
Ricardo

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Greg Carlson — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 13:08:40 GMT

Ricardo,

W2k adv server supports logical drives larger than 512 GB.. With the new version of ACU, recreate a Raid 5 w/ all 10 72gb hdds and choose the largest stripe size available. Once you are over 512gb, you need a larger stripe size for MS to address the space correctly.

Ciao,
Greg

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Ricardo A. Mari — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:02:01 GMT

Greg, I tried to create the logical disk with the largest stripe size but ACU prompts that the value must be lower than 502 Gb.
Could it be a firmware (ver 2.58) problem?
I found a newer version 2.60 for this controller on HP site.

Best regards
Ricardo

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Steven_151 — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 13:21:23 GMT

I am having the same issue, although I am using Windows 2003 Server Enterprise and 146gb drives. The ACU only allows me to enter 502gb as the max logical drive, and then subsequently after creation and saving drops the logical drive to 261gb.

I've updated the firmware on the RA4100 controller and am using the absolute latest ACU (7.17 I believe), but still no luck.

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Tom Conrady — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 11:43:33 GMT

I too am experiencing the same problem with 146 GB drives. We have been trying to create a single RAID 10 Logical disk across all 12 drives. The best that we found that we could do was create 2 logical disks and span them in Win2k disk management. We were able to get 820 GB but not the same performance of a single RAID 10 drive.

Stephen, what version did you upgrade your firmware to? Does anyone know what the latest version out is?

Thanks!
Tom

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Steven_151 — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:29:19 GMT

I just got word from HP that the RA4100 series is based on the 3rd or 4th generation of SMART-2 controllers, and therefore only support a maximum logical drive size of 502gb. They went end of life on 3/26/2001, so there is no bios upgrade or hardware upgrade path for this family to break that limit.

Re: RA4000 RAID Controller - Logical drive maximum size

Tom Conrady — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:40:13 GMT

Thanks for the update!

Tom