DL380G6 disk upgrade

[Luca Sampietro]

Good morning all.

I have a customer that has a DL380G6 server with a SmartArray P410i raid controller.

He has two disks in raid1 for operating system in bay 0 and 1, and three disks in bay 4,5 and 6 for data storage.

All these disks are 146GB 6G SAS 10K 2,5" (Spare n° 507283-001).

Now the server is going out of disk space and we would like to install three new disks in the remaining bays.

We have three options:

1) 500GB 6G SAS 7,2k 2,5"

2) 450GB 6G SAS 10k 2,5"

3) 300GB 6G SAS 10k 2,5"

May I have problem install this three disks in bay 2,3 and 8 and make a raid 5 logical unit?

Or may I have to move the existing three disks in raid5 in bay 2,3 and 4?

If I install the 500GB 6G SAS 7,2k 2,5", may be the server slow his performance according to the lower speed of these disks?

Or I only have to watch the 6G throughput parameter?

Thanks in advance and best regards.

Luke

[Dave73]

You can spread your new disks across the empty bays.

It is better to keep the disks in a specific raid in cronological order in the bays. Most people assume it to be like this. I personally would move the current disks to 2,3,4 and then install the new disks in 5,6,7

The speed of ths disk depends on the application residing on the disk. Hi I/O, low I/O and how much the client wants to spend.

[TVVJ]

RAID array may consist of drivers in different bay, but that does not interfere with performance. If these drives are made part of an array, then all hard drives will function at of 7.2K rpm, as the lowest speed of all drives will be taken.

Regards,

Vijayasarathy

[Luca Sampietro]

Many thanks for your answers, guys.

Vijayasarathy, i don't understand when you say:

"If these drives are made part of an array, then all hard drives will function at of 7.2K rpm, as the lowest speed of all drives will be taken."

Tell me if i am correct:

in a raid5 made of three drives if you have two drives that spin at 10k rpm and one drive that spin at 7,2k rpm, then all the drives speed decreases to 7,2k rpm.

And if i have TWO raid in the same controller, one configured as described just above, and one with all three drives at 10k rpm, first raid will operate at 7,2k and the secon raid will operate at 10k.

Correct?

Many thanks for your support and patience.

[TVVJ]

You are correct. The array that has a mix of 10k rpm disks and 7.2k rpm will function at 7.2k rpm. The array that has all 10k rpm drives will function at 10k rpm.

Regards,

Vijayasarathy