FC60 and HotSpare

[Daniel Ubeda]

Hi,

I have a FC60 disk array with 10 x 36Gb disks and I have defined one disk to hotspare.
Now, I will buy 20 x 18Gb disks.
I need to add one hotspare more (1 x 18Gb) ??

thanks

[Pete Randall]

How are you configuring this? What RAID level? I personally don't do hot spares because I'm fully mirrored (RAID 0/1) and I don't think it makes any sense - but that's me.

Pete

[Daniel Ubeda]

I have 5 disks in RAID5 , 1 in hotspare, and 4 in mirrored.

[Pete Randall]

Once again, this is just me, but I'd buy an extra disk and keep it on hand as a "cold spare". Your RAID 5 or your RAID 0/1 configuration will keep you up and running should one disk fail, and you can just swap out the failed one for your cold spare - then have HP replace the failed one.

Pete

[Tony Bacon]

80% of my customers do the same thing. They will have an extra disk or 2 on the side to swap out should there be a need.

Tony Bacon
tbacon@nasi.com
www.nasi.com

[Daniel Ubeda]

Which is the difference in have an extra disk in my hand, and have an extra disk into the FC60 (in this case, if the disk fail, the disk become available automatically ... ie: sunday or unattended service.)

thanks to your responses

[harry d brown jr]

I want you to read these links
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x96b70bce6f33d6118fff0090279cd0f9,00.html
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x316efd3f91d3d5118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html

then use this link:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/TopSolutions/1,,CA673458!1!questions,00.html

live free or die
harry

[Pete Randall]

Daniel,

The difference is that, as a hot spare, you don't get to use the capacity of that disk - it just sits there, lonely, empty, waiting. With a "cold" spare, the disk that would have been wasted can be used for data. If you have abundant capacity, then hot spare is probably the way to go. If you're trying to squeeze as much data as you can into the space you have available, then "cold" spare makes more sense, assuming you monitor the array closely in order to detect and replace failed drives.

Pete

[Gerrit Beyken]

Hi Daniel,

the HotSpareDisk in your FC60 is a so called GlobalHotSpare.
That means that this disk will "replace" failed Disks in every LUN of you FC60.
So it is important to always choose the biggest Disk (in your case the 36Gig disk).
HP recommends one HotSpare per SC10 if you want`t HA but i think that this is too much in most cases.
So the answer to your question is:
No, you don`t need to add another HotSpareDisk.
But if you want to add one you have to choose a 36Gb disk.

Best regards

Gerrit Beyken