Which RAID-Controller for a A3311A

[Sven Geschke]

Hi

I just bought an A3311A High Availability Storage System on Ebay (see attachment).
It contains four A3320A Drivetrays with 4.3 GB Wide Differential Disks (ST 34371DC). I would like to conntect it to a Compaq Proliant 5000R (another Ebay purchase), running RedHat 9.0. The box has two SmartArray 2/P controllers, one controlling the internal RAID-1, the other one was supposed to work with the A3311A, which it doesn't (due to the Differential Disks).
The question is which RAID controller will:
a.) work with the A3311A
b.) work in the Proliant 5000R
c.) run under RedHat 9.0
d.) all of the above
(solution "d" preferred) ;-)

As an alternative: Will it be possible to replace the Differential Disks with single-ended Disks and to just use my SmartArray 2/P?

Rgds
Sven

P.S. This thread ahs been moved from General to Disk Array. - Hp Forum moderator

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Sven,
please consider the following:
- jamaica has 2 busses. If you'll be doing RAIDing then it's wise to mirror bus-2-bus, thus it's not good idea to create RAID5;
- jamaica can have HVD drives and SE drives. There were SE RAID controllers (like old EISA Mylex ones), but I have not heard about HVD RAID controller (although those can exist :);
- you can not convert HVD to SE because your drives are HVD. Of course you can try replacing drives inside with SEs but I think that internal black casing HVD connector differs to SE.
I think that jamaica is not a device to utilize it as you want. I understand that you've bought it cheapily but it could take much more money to build up what you want instead of buying 2 DS2110s and doing 1+0 mirroring with Smart Array (for example)
Eugeny

[Sven Geschke]

Eugene,
Thank you for your reply.
I've already found out that my controllers won't work with the HVD-Disks (the Seagate Hotline was pretty helpful there).
To my understanding however, there are single-ended, low-profile disk modules for the A3311A (A3517-69003, please see page 115 of the attachment of the initial posting).

It now would be most interesting to know if the internal connectors of the A3320 and the A3517 differ (which would mean i have to acquire some of those), or if it would just be possible to replace the DF-Disks in the A3320 with SE-Disks.

About the mirroring:
The internal RAID-1 of this box is supposed to hold the OS only. The external RAID-5 (hopefully the A3311A) is supposed to be mounted as "/home", so bus-2-bus mirroring is not an option (thanks for the hint, though)

*** by the way: if there are/were no HVD-controllers, what was the A3311A in DF-mode supposed to be connected to?***

Rgds
Sven

[Eugeny Brychkov]

I do not know if SE disk will fit into HVD disk casing. It's a kind of hardware hacking :)
Jamaica is designed to work as a JBOD with legacy HP RISC servers/workstations which had HVD and SE adapters only (like K-class, D-class, J-class etc). Mirroring was done by MirrorDisk/UX software (no hardware mirroring)
Eugeny

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
This box usually works with HVD SCSI interfaces. ( Adaptec 2944 is a sample ).
Mirroring is not done by hardware but by software as Eugeny already mentioned.
I have also watched this box, but after thinking carefully i did not go for it.
Too complicated to get it running on Intel hardware.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Oleg Khoroshylov]

Hi Sven,

You can consider LVD to HVD converter. See

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=41329+0+archive/2003/freebsd-scsi/20030323.freebsd-scsi

and

http://www.scsi-cables.com/converters.htm

Though I never tried this practically and not sure it will effective in terms of $$$.

BR,
OK

P.S. Any news about Hertz and Mercedes ;) ?

[Sven Geschke]

Hi Oleg

I had a look at several SCSI-converters (i.e.
the parala MH16 at www.paralan.com), but at 624 Euros a piece it might be cheaper to buy an original compaq storage system on ebay.

You got me on the wrong foot with the Hertz/Mercedes thing... what do YOU know about that story? :-)

Rgds
Sven

[Oleg Khoroshylov]

Nothing except one of the messages in your previous thread about A3311A.
I liked that joke - amsterdam police joining HP forum!

[Joshua Scott]

You could always buy 4 more disks, probably for about $15-20 each, and then do the software mirroring as was suggested.

[Sven Geschke]

Hi Oleg
Strange, but I don't know anything about that joke and I can't find that posting. Could you give me the link?

Rgds
Sven