P400 - Splitting Arrays across ports

[CarlLawton]

I have a Smart Array P400 in a DL580 G5 with 7 disks.

I need to create a RAID1+0 with hot spare and a RAID5 with a hot spare.

The question is should i keep each array on its own port or split the arrays across each port ?

I can't find any info on perfomance when mixing ports.

Should i just fill the bay sequentially as i would normally or use bays 1, 2 and 3 for the RAID1+0 and 5, 6, 7 and 8 for the RAID5.

TIA

[Patrick Terlisten · Accepted solution]

Hello Carl,

it depends on you IO needs. If you have a lot of parallel IO, you should put all disks in one array and create then a RAID 1+0 and a RAID 5 logical drive. If you need MB/s, you should create two deperate arrays and create in each array one logical drive.

RAID A with one RAID 1+0 logical drive: Bay 1, 2 and 3.
RAID B with one RAID 5: Bay 4, 5, 6, 7.

or

RAID A with one RAID 1+0 and one RAID 5 logical drive: Bay 1 to 7.

You can use one disk on both arrays as a spare, as long as this disk is not smaller then the biggest disk in one of the arrays.

Because SAS is serial and each SAS port is it's own channel you can't "mix" ports or busses. Each disk can use the full bandwidth of the port. So you can fill up the disks right in the order of the bays.

Best regards,
Patrick

[CarlLawton]

Thanks Patrick

I would submit points but it is not giving me the option.

Thanks Again

[CarlLawton]

Got the points !!