Improve performance of DL380 G4

[Lai Chen Kang]

I have a number of DL380 G4.
One of them came with SmartArray 6i and BBWC.

I have intention of salvaging the 3.5 inches HDD from the other DL380 G4 and put them in a MSA.

Question is, which MSA is compatible? I see from the quickspecs MSA 20, 30 and a few others are compatible. But which one is suitable.

And how is it connected to the DL380 G4. I see that the DL380 G4 has a external SCSI port at the back. Is it possible to connect to a MSA?

[Steven Clementi]

You can use the MSA30, which is a 14 slot disk shelf. It comes in 2 flavors.. single bus and dual bus.

You can use the external port on the Dl380G4, but keep in mind that this would disable the interal port 2 connection. In order to use 6 drives internal to the server, make sure the bus is set for single mode.


The MSA20 is for SATA drives.

The MSA500 would be for Shared Storage (direct attached)

The MSA1000/1500 would be for Shared Storage (fibre attached)

The MSA2000 is not compatible.

[Lai Chen Kang]

How does this single bus and dual bus works? Do I need 2 Smart Array cards?

[Steven Clementi]

You would need an additional Smart Array Controller if you wanted to use the dual bus model. (Like the 6402, or similar)

The single bus model can attach to the external port on the server and you would have access to all 14 disk slots.


Steven

[Lai Chen Kang]

Do you mean I need 2 cards to have access to 14 drives?

Also as you mentioned, if external port is used, internal port will be disabled. This means the DL380 G4 would become quite bulky and wasteful.

[Steven Clementi]

The 6402 is a dual port card. You can run both ports of the MSA30DB. One on each channel.

If you only had a single Channel card... then you would need 2.


Steven