msa2012i as local storage

[danletkeman]

Hello,

We have a couple of msa2012i san's that are off warranty, and we were thinking of abandoning the iscsi portion and just using them as local storage for backup servers.  The controller has an external sas port on it.  Does anyone know if I hook up the controller to a sas card will it act just like say an msa60?  Will I be able to monitor the raid using the array utilities on the server just as you can with direct attached storage?

We have had so much trouble with corruption on the raid system on these boxes the other alternative we were thinking of was to buy a used msa60 chassis and just put the drives in them.

Thanks,

Dan.

[Johan Guldmyr · Accepted solution]

Hello, that SAS port is used to add more disk shelves. As the MSA2012 are re-branded dothill they are most likely not possible to manage via hp's ACU like on the smart array.

But perhaps software RAID could be used. I doubt it though.

If you move the disks (and want data intact) to a new MSA60 you need to backup+restore the data.