XP 128 Open-V Versus Open-E

[Howard Arnold]

We have an XP128 using OPEN-E disks and are thinking of converting to OPEN-V disks in order to better manage the size of our disks. We know the size of volumes we need and we want to create say 10gig OPEN-V disks in all the diskgroups and than create a LUSE volume across all disk groups. Has anyone have any performance concerns going to this type of setup. We are also considering putting all the OS stuff on one Diskgroup consisting of four 36gig disks.

Is anyone using Tru64 clusters with the XP boxes?

Thanks,

Howard

[generic_1]

If this is a OS disk I would put it on a local mirrored disks. If this is an application or database I would put it on the san and make my lun sizes as small as possible spread evenly and widely across all the controllers, and I think that the customer OPENV sizes.
Small lun sizes will give you big advantes by saving space, and speed by allowing your frames firmware to spot readaheads better because it is less likely to have to requests hitting the same lun at the same time :). It will also be nice to have another handy dandy lun the same size to add when you later need to expand your VG :)

THe bad of that is carpel tunnel and running out of addressing for large disks assignments :)

Use LVM striping or equivelent :).
Plan your layout of your frame carefully before day one so you dont have major groups in your company impacting each other.
Be creative. IE putting your BCV if you use them on the middle of the spindle and your data on the outside where its faster.

In general though I am not a fan of custom lun sizes that differ from each other on the frame. I like to take full advantage of the bandwith and read ahead with small luns striped strategically across all the fibers from the getgo. Then assign luns in order from the various groups that have been preassigned to differnt orgs. In reality though there will always be some tradeoffs you will have to deal with.

This link might help some with your LUSE
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=779561