MSA 1000 Direct Connectivity

[Navaneeda]

HI,

Can i connect the MSA 1000 directly from my server without the SAN Swithces ???

How many servers i can connect directly to MSA 1000 without SAN Switch.

How the Active and redundant controllers are interconnected???

Thanks

[Víctor Cespón · Accepted solution]

The MSA1000 can have 4 kinds of FC connectivity module on the back:
- Single port I/O module
- MSA Hub 2/3 (2 external connections)
- MSA SAN Switch 6 (5 external connections, no longer sold)
- MSA SAN Switch 2/8 (brocade switch, 7 external ports)

You can connect servers to all of them. You can also use 2 of them, to have redundant paths.

The MSA controllers communicate through the internal backplane. Currently they can work on Active/Passive mode (firmware 5.20) or Active/Active mode (firmware 7.20)

[Navaneeda]

Thanks for the reply.

How many Direct FC ports in MSA 1500. I have gone throug the Specs and it shows that only 1 port available. IS it correct??

[Víctor Cespón]

The MSA1500 is different. The controllers can have 1 or 2 fiber channel I/O modules (1 port each).
You can attach a server directly to MSA1500 too, but these enclosures are designed to be used on a SAN, providing storage to several servers.
If you're only going to connect one of two servers, it's better and cheaper a MSA500 G2, which is connected through SCSI cables.

Check MSA1500 quickspecs here:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11945_div/11945_div.html

[Manley Loving]

Hello,
Does anyone know if the MSA Firmware 5.20 is specifically recommended not to be installed on a MSA1000 with the older MSA SAN Switch 6 installed? I'm aware that we don't sell the MSA Switch 6, but has there been any notices saying to not upgrade the controller firmware past 4.24 if this switch is installed? I was told just the other day from a HP engineer, that he heard that the 5.20 firmware does not support that Switch 6, but we can't definitely say if that's true.

Does anyone know about this?