12H v. VA

[Greg Stark_1]

We have a number of L2000's (dual 440's, 1G) each with an Autoraid 12H. The lease on these boxes will be up on soon and we are beginning to spec out their replacement. I was considering changing to an rp5430 750 1-way with a VA7100 with 256MB controllers but I have a few questions I was hoping you all could help me with.

1. How have the VA's compared with the 12H's in your environments?

2. We have had performance issues with the 12H's if we don't leave a large amount of the disk unallocated (40-60%), do the VA's have this requirement as well?

3. I have become somewhat familiar with administering the 12H's, are the VA's similiar?

4. Are the 256MB controllers a major step up from the 12H's 96MB controllers? Or, should I try to get mgmt to spring for the 512 or 1G controllers?

As always, thanks in advance.
Greg

[Bill McNAMARA_1 · Accepted solution]

Hi Greg,

1. How have the VA's compared with the 12H's in your environments?

Much better straight away, disk rpm and io interface...
autoraid is no match..

2. We have had performance issues with the 12H's if we don't leave a large amount of the disk unallocated (40-60%), do the VA's have this requirement as well?

Well, won't be as bad, but this is the AutoRaid element of disk space versus performance raid trade off.
It won't be as bad as the best of the autoraid!

3. I have become somewhat familiar with administering the 12H's, are the VA's similiar?

Yes, similar command set, more similar to the FC60 though...

4. Are the 256MB controllers a major step up from the 12H's 96MB controllers? Or, should I try to get mgmt to spring for the 512 or 1G controllers?

Naturally, you should benchmark, I'd stick with the 256 to start with, if you notice long r/w times you can always later upgrade. HP should help you scale for your requirements.

Later,
Bill

[Trevor Roddam_1]

I Agree with Bill.

The VA's are generally much better and handle similarly.
If you can handle a 12H and know about the write working set then you'll have no problems learning the VA.

Beware of the priority of the controllers. One is the master and one the slave. Don't worry the slave will act as a master when required, it is for performance. The master will slightly out perform the master, enough to use as a tuning tool anyway.

If you have a large volume of small files that are being changed regularly start at the 512 cache but 256 is a good start point. The VA's work better under load. As per 12H's use multiple LUN's to make a single mount point. Better throughput.

Have fun with it before going online.