Swap in 300GB drives replacing 36GB Ultra3/Ultra320

[Tom Pearson_1]

We plan to increase disk space on a VMWare ESX server which currently has a 6-drive raid-5 array with a mix of 36GB 10K drives, some Ultra3 and some Ultra320. We intend to swap in individual 300GB drives and wait for rebuild to complete then do the next... The server is a DL380 G3, using the 5i controller.

Anybody tried a similar case? What would you update to improve chances of success? Both the current mix of protocols and the newness of the 300GB drives concern me.

After array expansion we intend to just use another logical drive over the addittional space.

[Bostjan Kosi]

Be sure to upgrade BIOS and 5i firmware to be shure it supports 300g drives. 5i controller is an U3 device, so all comunication on the SCSI bus is U3. I have done several upgrades that way and they all prove to be time consuming but safe with no datalos.

[e4services]

I concur. There is no need to worry. There is no difficulty mixing "protocols" as you say. U320 would need a U320 controller to actually communicate at the speed anyway. And the drive and size will not be a concern to the controller, it does not care.