CS210 Upgrade HDDs to expand capacity

[AVITGuru]

Good day all

I am hoping someone can explain and advise me if it's possible to expand storage on a Nimble CS-210 array. I don't have an expansion shelf and from my understanding the base arrary is limited to 8TB (RAW) and that means 4-9TB usable capacity as per the specification sheet. Currently I have 8x1TB (4 in slots 1-4 and 4 in slots 13-16) drives and 2x80GB SSDs. Is it possible to add more 1xTB drives or replace the 1xTB drives with larger capacity ones? If so what model drives are recommended?  Of course I realise I would need to backup all data and rebuild the arrays from scratch.  I currently have setup 2x volumes of 2TB each for datastores for a VMware ESXi 5.5 host.

I look forward to any advice you may offer.

Regards,

Alan

[Nick_Dyer · Accepted solution]

Hello

It is not possible to change the drives in the head shelf (except to add 2x more SSDs in if you wish).

The only possible expansion option for capacity it to attach an ES1 expansion shelf. The smallest amount is 15TB raw, 11TiB usable (called an ES1-H25)

[AVITGuru]

Many thanks ndyer39.

This was my understanding too, as the hardware and/or software are limited to support a certain amount of storage space. The alternative is to replace the base array with a newer model of course but I was just trying to see what the most cost efficient upgrade would be, as you mentioed the expansion shelf would make most sense.

Cheers!