DL380 Storage Server large volume best practice

[Hans Beyer]

I have a DL380 G5 storage server with 2 MSA60 enclosures connected, populated with 1TB SATA drives. System is going to be used for short term archiving and backups. What is HP's best practice for creating and supporting large volumes. I know you can extend a dynamic volume using the O/S (Which is 2003 Storage Server 64bit) but does HP support volumes spanned together without using a different management software for this other than the O/S? I also have an EVA 6000 with over 12TB of storage on this and we had to purchase another software to manage the volumes because HP does not recommend using or support the use of only the O/S for this purpose. Any information or ideas on best way to carve up storage for this purpose is appreciated!

[Greybeard]

Hi Hans,
You don't say what connection you have. With a RAID controller as HBA (p800 or similar) you would use ACU. If controlling large volume addressing with the O/S your server will be working pretty hard to stream a backup to disk at the same time. Better to use a dedicated card.

[Hans Beyer]

Sorry about that, the system is connected via P800 and I also currently have 12 - 1TB SATA drives in the 1st enclosure and 4 in the second. All the drives are the same size and model.