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Re: MSA1000 and "many" servers

 
kazet
Occasional Contributor

MSA1000 and "many" servers

Hi there,

I usually deal with EVA's so I don't know much about the MSA.

If I have an MSA with for instance 10 physical disks, can I carve out 20 LUN's and then mount the LUN's on 10 servers (2 on each server)?

And, if so, are the LUN's distributed across all 10 physical disks?

Hope you can help.

Karsten
5 REPLIES 5
Johan Brusche
Honored Contributor

Re: MSA1000 and "many" servers

Karsten,

You could start at below web-page:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/msa1000/specifications.html

The main thing to remember is that you have to select upfront the type of servers you want to connect, which results in running with firmware that only supports that type of servers. Eg: if you run with Intel servers, you cannot share the drives with AlphaServers.

JB.

_JB_
kazet
Occasional Contributor

Re: MSA1000 and "many" servers

Thanks Johan, but I already checked the quickspec, and found nothing about minimums and maximums. I'm afraid quickspecs has become a marketing tool...

Karsten
otto warlich
Regular Advisor

Re: MSA1000 and "many" servers

Hello Karsten,

If you created one raid set this is true.
The raid is over all ten disks, the lun are on that raid.

With regards,

Otto
kazet
Occasional Contributor

Re: MSA1000 and "many" servers

What I have been able to piece together:

- You create an array from physical disks. An array seems similar to a disk pool on the EVA.
- You then carve out LUN's from the arrays disk blocks.
- There is a maximum of 32 LUN's per MSA.

I still have a few questions:

1. How many arrays can you have per MSA?
2. How many physical disks can be assigned to an array?
3. How many LUN's can be created from 1 array?
4. Can LUN's created from the same array have different RAID levels?

And more importantly, where am I supposed to find this kind of information?

Karsten
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: MSA1000 and "many" servers

Karsten,
the MSA1000 is nowhere that much flexible like the EVA. I would call it a 'SAN-ified' Smart-Array Controller.

1. not sure - the MSA1000 supports up to 42 disks, so perhaps you can have up to 21 arrays of 2 disks each.

2. no idea, sorry - my guess is 42, but I have not tried.

3. thirty-two (32) - I know, because I have tried it!

4. yes. The 'array' is only a 'pseudo-object' - it is not even visible from the Command Line Interface (CLI).


There is a severe limitation if you carve multiple LUNs out of a single array:
you can only delete LUNs in reverse order of creation! If you create LUNs 5,2,7 on an array, then you can only delete in the order 7,2,5. I know this, because I have tried it (from the CLI), too. I have not seen that this is documented anywhere.
.