EVA 4100 Hard Drive Upgrade

[jpcardona]

Hi,

I have a client with an EVA 4100 working with 8x 146GB Hard Drives. They just bought 6x 300GB (AG425A) to add to the group.

1. Is it ok to mix different capacity hard drives?

2. What's the minimum XCS version required to support the 300GB Hard Drives? Current version is 6.110

Thanks in advance

João Paulo Cardona

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk, Disk Arrays (Retired Discussion Board) to Storage Area Networks (SAN) (Enterprise). - Hp Forum Moderator

[Uwe Zessin]

It is possible to mix different disk drive sizes in a group, but:

The size of the protection space as defined by the so-called "protection level" is 0, 2 or 4 times the size of the largest disk drive in the group. The recommended value is single, which means that in your case the reservation would jump from about 292 Hardware GigaBytes to 600(!) HWGB. Command View EVA shows Software Gigabytes, so you will have to divide those values by: (1.024*1.024*1.024).

Another potential problem is that you might lose capacity over time. The EVA 'marries' disk drives as couples to store VRAID-1 data (even if you don't use that level). When a large and a small disk drive gets married, only the smaller capacity is available on both drives.

Now, it is possible, that after some time during maintanance operations (disk failure, ungroup/regroup operation) disk drives change their partners. You cannot create another disk group, because 8 disk drives are the bare minimum.

I haven't checked any drive/firmware compatibility lists, but XCS V6.110 (which can deal with 300GB disks) has been out of support for some time now.

[jpcardona]

Thank you so much.

Best Regards

João Paulo Cardona

[RaulBJ]

Hi Uew Zessin,
Do you know where could I find documents or support to help me to EVA 4400 hard drive upgrade?

I hope your soon anwser.