MSA 1000 + Adding 300 GB Drives

[Ryan Thibodeau]

I've recently received some 300GB drives for a MSA 1000, and I am curious if these can be added to the existing arrays of 146GB disks, or if I will need to create new arrays with the 300GB drives. Additionally, I am suspicious that a firmware upgrade may be necessary for the MSA to recognize the 300GB drives. I currently don't have access to the MSA to check the firmware version, but I suspect it hasn't been upgraded in at least a couple of years, and possibly since the unit came online nearly three years ago. Can anyone offer any insight in regards to these questions? Thanks in advance.

[Jefferson Humber]

Ryan,

I can't remember exactly what F/W version introduced support for the 300Gb HDD, but HP released a customer advisory reccomending that all customers upgrade to v.4.48 (latest version).

Disks can be mixed, but be careful mixing types and speeds i.e U320 & U160 disks, and 10k rpm & 15k rpm disks. You could reduce performance if some disk members are slower than others in the same array. You may also not utilise the full capacity of the disks depending on how you configure things.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

[Carlos Rubio]

Besides, if in an array with discs of 146 Gb are added discs of 300 Gb, only there will be used 146 Gb of every disc, because in an array all the discs must have the same size. The rest of the disc will not be able to be used.