HP MSA 2040: One raidset or two for large volume

[Dannyf1]

Hello

I have a HP MSA 2040 SAN with 18 x 1.2TB drives available. I plan to utilise these disks to create a volume that will be used for data storage. For performance and reliability would it better to create:

1. 1 x raid 6 disk group constituted of 16 disks with 16.7TB of available storage space for the volume.
2. 2 x raid 6 disk groups constituted of 9 disks each and create a 16.7TB virtual volume over the two disk groups.
3. Or something else

I’d appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks

[Torsten.]

I would create 2 storage pools (use the GL200 firmware features) to utilize both controllers.

[Dannyf1]

Thanks for the reply Torsten.  I am using GL200

You do not appear to be able to create storage pools only modify existing pools. I thought each storage pool i.e. Storage A and Storage B related to the two controllers but correct me if I am wrong. 

When creating a virtual volume it appears you must select which pool the virtual volume will be created on. It does not appear to allow you to create the virtual volume using disk sets that are in different pools.

[CubanFrog]

I'm on the same boat here.

In my case I have 4 SSD and 20 SAS. We purchased the Performance auto tiering license so I created :

 1 x 4 SSD Disks in Raid 5

 2 x 9 SAS Disks in Raid 5

 2 SAS Disks as Global Spare

If I move one of the SAS Raid to Pool / Controller B to balance the storage then I have to create a separate Volume for it.