Is it possible to move disks from MSA1000 to another scsi controller?

[hh454]

We want to configure a MSA1000 with several mirror sets and be able to break the mirror, pull the drive and read the preserved data (somewhere)at a later time.

From what I've read so far, you can migrate from a smart array to the MSA but you can't go back to smart arrays or direct attached storage.
Just to complicate things, the drives will be used on a VMware cluster(Linux OS).
Can this drive be reinstalled back in the MSA and re-presented with a new LUN with out losing the data?
Is there any other options to read the "preserved" MSA disk?

thanks in advance-
Harry

[Rob Leadbeater · Accepted solution]

Hi Harry,

I've never tried it, but as the MSA1000 is based around SmartArray controllers I don't see why you shouldn't be able to move the disks onto another SmartArray controller.

You might just want to ensure that you only have one logical drive on the mirror set.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[John Kufrovich]

Harry,
It depends on the MSA FW level. If your MSA has old FW then it may be possible. In some of the most recent FW, we made some changes to the Meta data structures. Some Smart Arrays will not know how to interrupt the structures.

jk

[Andy_Stor]

Hi Harry,

As the above 2 replies clearly says that yes it can be upgraded provided the firmware level matches.

Everydrive has a RIS copy, which has the metadata/configuration about the array and logical drives, so you can take out a member of the mirror and then later connect it back it would have the information intact but its difficult to say if it would work if you connect to a different controller. because every controller has got its ID addressing scheme. MSA1000/MSA1500 though have 4 buses but the way it address disks are little different.

So be careful about the Migration of Raid controllers.

Andy*