DL380G6 16 6G SAS drives

[J Morrison]

Hi,

Can we expect better performance from 16 x 6G SAS drives vs 16 x 3G SAS drives in a DL380G6 ?

Thanks

John

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello John,

I don't thinkt that the 6G drives will be faster then the 3G drives. 6G or 3G are the bandwidth of the channel from disk to controller (or sas-expander to controller). Not the speed of a single disks. A single disks is not able to fill up a sas-channel.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Patrick

[J Morrison]

Thats what I thought too.

So why bother with 6G SAS drives while the drive can't delivery anywhere near that ?

John

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello John,

investmentprotection is one cause why you should by 6G drives instead of 3G, but only if there is no pricedifference. I think no one will use those drives in a server, that has a 6G capable controller. The P410i isn't 6G capable.

If the price for 6G and 4G drives is the same, buy 6G. If not, don't buy them.

Best regards,
Patrick

[francis lesigne_1]

As far as i know, the P410 will support 6Gb speed in the future (probably with a firmware update).
The Quickspec says:

3G SAS (6G SAS Capable) technology delivers high performance and data bandwidth and contains full compatibility with 1.5G SATA (3G SATA Capable) technology.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13201_div/13201_div.HTML

[Daniel Bowers]

The P410i is 6Gb/s capable. 6Gb/s speed is already enabled on the P410i in the DL360 G6, DL380 G6, and BL460c G6. So when used with 6Gb/s capable drives, you'll see 6Gb/s speed to each drive today.


The P410, P212, and P411 controllers will get a FW upgrade (within the month I think) that allows those to run at 6Gb/s SAS speeds too. So when used with 6Gb/s drives, and on servers that have 6Gb/s backplanes, you'll get 6Gb/s speeds there.

If any of the components -- drive, controller, or backplane -- aren't 6Gb/s capable, then it'll negotiate down to the slower speed; i.e. 3Gb/s in the case of 3Gb/s drives.

If you have a bottleneck in performance on data to the drive in your situation, it'd be a shame to have a 6Gb/s capable system but only put 3Gb/s drives in in.

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/reality-check-server-insights/archive/2009/04/08/6gbps-sas-drives-for-g6-servers.aspx

[Elle_4]

The integrated P410i states: 3G SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)/6G SAS Capable

while the P410 states:

Disk Drive and Enclosure Interface - 6G SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
Transfer rate 3G SATA (Serial ATA).

Why is the P410i currently listed as capable while the P410 is stated plainly 6G? I feel like this is fuzzy and that while HP might mean one thing they want you to infer another?

Just trying to clarify and get it correct. Thoughts?

My Product Bulletin was updated this AM.

Thank you.