upgrade from HSZ70 to HSZ80 - any benefit?

[Ian Miller.]

I've got a couple of AlphaServer 4100 clusters with HSZ70 based RA7000 storage arrays (mirror sets and stripesets configured. Hotstandby pairs of controllers). There may be some HSZ80 array controllers becoming available within the company and I was wondering if there would be any benifit in replacing the HSZ70 with HSZ80. Is there a significant performance advantage or other functional improvement?

[Uwe Zessin]

Hello Ian,
a HSZ80 controller module has two host ports and you can control which unit is visible on which host port.

[Ian Miller.]

thank you for your reply but I can't think of a use for two host ports in my clusters. All disks are supposed to be visable to both nodes. Is there a significant performance or reliability improvelent? Is the HSZ80 also considered end of line with no updates?

[Uwe Zessin]

You could put a second cluster on the other host ports or have another set of paths to your disks - not sure if that was supported on the HSZ70. I have seen installations where a single bad adapter killed a complete bus - you're running in transparent failover mode, not multibus?

I never have tried to measure perfomance and I don't recall any data, sorry. The HSZ80 is EOL.