HP RP3440 server and HP StorageWork MSA30 on hardware mirror (raid 1) configuration

[chui_88]

Hi,

I had a unit of HP RP3440 server and a unit of HP Storagework MSA30.  The HP server come with two units of HP Smart Array 6402 card(refer P/N - A9890A). The HP server is direct attached to HP StorageWork MSA30 via thru the external scsi cable.  The HP StorageWork MSA30 come with six units of 300GB HDD.  The first three units of 300GB HDD is install into channel A. The second three units of 300GB HDD is install into channel B. The first unit of HP Smart Array 6402 card is configure with raid 5 (3x300GB HDD) on channel A.  The second unit of HP Smart Array 6402 card is configure with raid 5 (3x300GB HDD) on channel B.  

Question 1. Can i do the hardware mirror(raid 1) configuration from channel A to channel B on HP Smart Array 6402 card?

Question 2. If can, what is the step? Any command line?

Regards,

Chui

P.S. This thread has been moved from General to Disk array. - Hp Forum Moderator

[Torsten.]

Is there already a RAID configured?

If you create a mirror RAID with all 6 disks, the controller is clever enough to mirror channel A to channel B.

Or do you want to mirror the first RAID5 to the second? Does this make sense? If you really want, use LVM.

[VologyNeal · Accepted solution]

That might not be the most efficient way to use all 6 drives.  Depending on use case, you would get better IO and lower latency in RAID 10.  It would also present roughly 300GB more space (900GB).  If you need more space and R5 write performance is acceptable I would recomend setting it up as RAID5 on 5 drives with a spare.  This would be a little less than 1.2TB of space and better write performance than your proposed config.  You also have enough disks for two R5 array groups without spares, but not sure what benefit that would provide you.  If the reason you are attempting this is for greater fault tolerance, RAID6 is still favorable imho.

RAID 10: Drives 1,2,3 in RAID 0 mirror to Drives 4,5,6 in RAID 0 - Best Performance

RAID 5 w/ spare:  Drives 1,2,3,4,5 in RAID5, Drive 6 as spare

RAID 6: Drives 1,2,3,4,5,6 in Raid 6 Group, very roughly 1.2TB with no spare.  Rarey see Fast Class drives in this configuration given their higher reliability.  Typically reserver for SATA or NL drives.

[chui_88]

Hi Torsten,

Raid 5 is configure on channel a and  b.  I want to do the hardware raid 1 on first raid 5 to the second. What is the step to configure the LVM?

Regards,

Chui 

[Torsten.]

Just to confirm ... you have 2x RAID5 with 3 disks each and now you want to mirror the first RAID5 to the second? May I ask you why? It's overkill, isn't it? It will give you the space of approx. 2 disks only. Why not create a RAID5 or RAID10 accross the 6 disks?

[chui_88]

Hi Torsten,

MSA30 come with two bus. Bus A and bus B. If the bus A is fail, the second bus B will take over. This is for redundancy and the MSA Storage won't go down at all.  I know i will have a lasser disk space. Your idea is very good, i can configure the raid 10 or raid 5 across all 6 disks. I will use the saconfig command line to configure the raid.

Regards,

Chui