Help me understand adding capacity

[MCary1]

I'm working with an EVA4400 that has 8 of the 12 bays filled in it's one and only Drive Array.  (A small setup).

I've been reading the documentation but I'm a bit confused about some of the fine points.

We are looking to add higher-speed drives in another pool.  Can I just buy 4 higher-speed drives to fill the remaining slots and configure them as another storage pool or do I need to add drives in multiples of 8, nessecitating buying another Array?

Price is a factor, so I'm trying to to figure out if using my last 4 open bays to create a small 4 drive pool is "ok", "not optimal", "won't work" or "a really bad idea"

P.S. This thread has been moved from General to Storage Area Networks (SAN) (Enterprise). - Hp forum Moderator

[Torsten. · Accepted solution]

A new diskgroup needs at least 8 disks. You don't need another array, but another disk shelf.

[MCary1]

Thanks, that is what I needed to know.

Dropping $3000 on a storage enclosure will add to the cost of this, but it is better to know that going in.  I found the documentation a bit fuzzy on that point.  I probably wasn't reading the right stuff.

Am I correct in my understanding that if I want to add a 2nd disk shelf for a total of 24 drives I could split that into 3 disk groups of 8 each even if one group spanned the two shelves?

[NSharon]

hi there,

Yes you could do that, the pre-req for a DG is a minimal of 8 Disks.