hp p400 array controller

[kjcr33]

I have a DL 380 G5 with 2 P400 controllers. The way the server is cofigured all drives are on one controller. 8 physical drives. What I want is 4 logical drives

2 logical on 1 physical
1 logical on 3 physical
1 logical on 4 physical

My question is is it more optimal to split the drives on the controllers?

Also should you keep logical drive on drives in the same port (cage)

thanks for your time.

[marsh_1]

hi,

yes i would split the drives between the controllers, you should gain by splitting the workload up. each controller can only see it's own physical drives and logical units have to be made up of the physical drives each controller can see, if you have more than one disk shelf attached to each controller this can help with redundancy in some circumstances, this is in the hardware , if you use software raid / mirroring software you could have a logical unit made up of physical or logical drives from each controller.

hope this helps

[kjcr33]

thank you for your answer. On the P400 there is also 2 ports or cages. Are there any performance issues crossing the ports in a logical configuration?

[marsh_1]

no , not as far as i am aware of and in the case of raid 1 volumes this would cater for shelf failure.

hope this helps.

[kjcr33]

Thanks Mark. What's funny is that I just received a reply from an engineer that said to keep them on the same controller. Go figure! So on the controllers that I am using with 8 drives there is 2 ports (or cages) should the logical drives be configured within those ports if possible or does it matter?

[marsh_1]

AFAIK it does not matter, i can't see why you would want to put everything through one controller when you have two ?

[kjcr33]

I agree

[marsh_1]

good luck with it - whatever you decide to do !