topic Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern in Disk Enclosures

EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

EVA 3100 with Mixture F — Tue, 22 May 2007 09:20:09 GMT

Currently i am having a EVA3100 with one diskgroup (8 Harddisk and with one Vdisk) connect to a UNIX Server. My client wish to create another diskgroup mainly to use as a file server for Windows base. Unfortunately there is only left 6 harddisks bay in the enclosure and i unable to create a new diskgroup with only 6 harddisk. ( Minimum 8 Harddisk require for a new diskgroup ). My concern is if i add the 6 new Harddisks into the existing diskgroup (expand the existing diskgroup) and create another Vdisk as a fileserver for Windows, will there be any issue such as performance or data corruption since the existing diskgroup is currently connect to a UNIX server?
Please advise...Thanks

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

Luk Vandenbussche — Tue, 22 May 2007 09:40:40 GMT

There is no problem to add 6 disks to your diskgroup. What the performance issue will be depends on your application.

Don't forget to create zoning on your san switches. One for each OS

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

Amar_Joshi — Tue, 22 May 2007 09:47:44 GMT

It's alway good to have more disks in single disk groups rather than having several disk groups of fewer disks, this way your applications (existing and new) will be able to gain more read/write performance from the disks.

This is very true for random IO based applications where response time from disk is bottleneck. With more disk spindles in diskgroup data is well spread on all the disks which reduces read/write time by using parallel read/write mechanism.

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

EVA 3100 with Mixture F — Tue, 22 May 2007 10:07:03 GMT

Dear ,Luk Vandenbussche

Thanks for your prompt reply. From your replies, does it mean that there will be no issues if under one diskgroup, i created 2 Vdisk whereas one is conencted to a UNIX server (HR Applications) and the other one is conected to Windows for files and folders sharing purposes? Will this 2 file system crash on each other under a same diskgroup?

Thanks

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

EVA 3100 with Mixture F — Tue, 22 May 2007 10:11:01 GMT

Dear Amardeep

Thanks for your prompt reply.. Anyway, my other concern is that will there be any issues if under one diskgroup with 2 vdisk where one is for Unix and another is for Windows?

Thanks

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

Amar_Joshi — Tue, 22 May 2007 10:21:24 GMT

Not at all, it's very common to have a single diskgroup and mix of OS type assigned there.

Make sure the host characteristics are set properly for each host.

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

EVA 3100 with Mixture F — Tue, 22 May 2007 10:39:43 GMT

Dear Amardeep

Thanks again for your prompt reply.. Sorry for being so troublesome, but is there any documents or URL links to support the your reply? So that i can show to the user and clear his concern. Thanks..

Re: EVA 3100 with Mixture File System Concern

Rob Leadbeater — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:18:47 GMT

Hi,

Please refer to the SAN Design Reference here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00403562/c00403562.pdf

Specifically on page 178 it states:

"EVA HSV-based controller storage systems support shared access with any combination of operating
systems listed..."

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

P.S. Remember to assign points !
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