MSA20 drives support!!!

[Andy H Wilson]

Hi all
I'm in desperate need of more space, and as of right now, I have 12 X 750G drives with the MSA20, wondering if the controller would support 12 X 1.5T drives.
Thanks

[peyrache]

From Quickspecs
JYP

At A Glance
Support for the Smart Array 6404, Smart Array 6402, Smart Array 642 and the Smart Array 6i Controllers
Supports HP SATA 3G disk drives, with capacities of 250 GB, 500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB - 1 year warranty
Total storage capacity of 12TB (with 12 HP SATA 3G 1TB hard drives)
Ultra320 SCSI host connectivity
Boot from storage - move all disks to external storage for best capacity utilization
Redundant hot-plug power supplies and fans standard
3 year limited warranty (MSA20 enclosure only)
Pre-failure warranty that covers SATA disk drives (See note below)
NOTE: Customer must be running Insight Manager in order to get Pre-failure warranty. It is only covered for the warranty period of the drive which is 1 year for SATA drives.
NOTE: When using 750 GB or higher SATA HDD behind a MSA1500 or a MSA1510i, the maximum capacity available is 64 TB, maximum available storage capacity depends on the RAID level being implemented, and is based on maximum number of LUNs (32) and maximum LUN size (2 TB). Support for 750 GB or 1 TB SATA requires minimum firmware V 5.20 on MSA1500 and V1.32 on MSA1510i and V2.02 on MSA20.
NOTE: 3G SATA drives will only function as 1.5G drives in a MSA20

[Smith Martin]

Yes there is support for 1.5TB drives.

Mine has 11X 1.5TB Drives, going to 12 today.

Just remember the 2TB lun limit size..

I originally was using the unit as 2 X Raid 5 array, but had a few problems extending the arrays after upgrading the drives(the first drives were 300 GB, then 500, then 650 then 1TB etc, so they were extended several times..)

So I went for 6 X mirrored drives.

Want more space for my music, so now upgrading to 4 X raid 5 (as I write)

Need to use dynamic disks (server 2008) to get reasonable drive space... (I guess that will stuff up my reliability)

So if you are lucky, start replacing the 750's with 1.5TB (I use Seagate Barracuda Gen 11 - not the enterprise EN Version - but have used them in the past) They do not appear to be firmware specific,

Then try a drive expansion, but back up your data first, and don't be surprised if you have to blow away your raid config and do it again.

Martin

[gnoptiy]

I have the same request for my MSA20 too!

There are 1.5TB and 2TB disks available ready in the market, It will be nice if the controller would support 12 x 2TB (JBOD).

From the Quickspec, HP doesn't say anything about 1.5TB or 2TB. My MSA20 is running on firmware v2.08, will the large capacity disks work out-of-the-box without any firmware updates?

Lastly, it is not necessary to get "enterprise" class SATA disks for the MSA20, right?

[peyrache]

what is controller type for your MSA20 ?
JYP

[gnoptiy]

my MSA20 is connected to a DL380 G4 storage server, with a built in SmartArray 6i controller (64MB cache).

I'm not going creating any fault-tolerant RAID arrays, i just need the maximum disk space.

[peyrache]

as said previously there are a know limitation of 2TB by lun on 6i so adding 2TB disks do not give you more fexibility even
created more luns
JYP

[gnoptiy]

I understand the LUN size limitation. All I wanted to know is whether the 1.5TB and 2TB disks are compatible to the MSA20 controller.

If the disks will work, I can do:
- 12 of 1 x 2TB (JBOD - 24TB useable)
- 6 of 2 x 1TB (RAID1 - 12TB useable)

If I need maximum space, I can configure as in the 1st plan. Else, I can sacrifice 50% for fault tolerance.

[gnoptiy]

typo:

6 of 2 x 2TB (RAID1 - 12TB useable)

[peyrache]

even if working this is not a supported configuration so keep in mind if you loose datas
JYP