P4300 G2. Not going well.

[DMcCoy_1]

I've just had a 4300 G2 7.2TB starter SAN delivered.

So far I don't think much of it at all! I've already got a EMC CX300 and MSA 2012i in place.

Issues so far:

1) Specs page lists dual controllers. It does not say you will lose 50% of the space to achieve this because they are independant units (unlike my considerably cheaper 2012i).

2) You lose extra disks to RAID 6. Again the specs page simply lists it as 16 drives, if it had said 2 x 8 then I probably would have looked at something else.

3) 10Gb CX4 installation instructions are wrong. It tells me to install the additional 2GB of RAM into slot 4. Which one? There is a slot four for each processor. I assumed it would be the one with the CPU present.

4) RAM does not work in slot 4, as instructed. You just get an error about there being an issue in slot 4. It *does* work in slot 1 though (with the preconfigured RAM in slot 2).

5) One of my nodes is dead. Well not quite dead, but it reads a temperature of -7c and promptly shuts down after a couple of minutes.


They could be fantastic units once I have them running, but it seems a long way off getting them even usable at present.

Anyone else have they up and running, or is that going to be disapointing too?

[DMcCoy_1]

Oh, one node was also in "maintenenace mode" when I first booted it. This was fixed by poking the dip switches to make sure they were in the right place.

I assume someone tested these units before they shipped :|

[Bryan McMullan]

Sounds like it wasn't prep'ed very well. I've had nodes that arrived with the BBU disconnected, mobo's that were dead, etc...I guess you could be having some bad luck.

As for #2, I am pretty sure it says 2 nodes with 8 disks each, but I agree that they attempt to hide it.

The software and hardware is definately good, just looks like you got a bum unit. Good luck with getting them up and running!

[DMcCoy_1]

So, an engineer was sent to replace the drive bays, which didn't fix it. I don't even know if the bays have a temperature sensor in it.

Nearly one week later and HPs support have decided the best course of action is to replace the drive bays *again*.

I've even disconnected eveything from the front bays to the board and powered on with the ilo, just to show that it's not the bays.

They are still sending an engineer to replace the bays again tomorrow.


Quite fed up with LeftHand/HP as I've still not got a usable SAN :(

[Bryan McMullan]

Put pressure on your sales guy to get the unit completely replaced. Obviously you've given them the time and effort to fix it on their schedule, now they need to get it replaced fully ASAP.

Sorry to hear about that though, our DL320s units have been rock solid. The latest P4500 units have been slightly flakey (between firmware issues and other problems). But that's only in comparison to the older units.

Good luck!

[Scott Smith_7]

DMcCoy,

Any luck on getting your unit fixed? I still don't have a hardware and software maintenance agreement from HP. No one in HP knows much at all about LeftHand...They sure like to sell them though.

Scott