Hard drive upgrade for DL380-G3

[BillClark22]

Have a DL380-G3 with 72GB Ultra320 SCSI drives. I'm wanting to upgrade the hard drives to 146GB or larger and have a compatability question. Can I purchase ANY brand of Ultra320 SCSI drive or does it have to be HP branded? I ask because there is an almost $300 difference per drive. I just want a basic hard drive that will fit the carriers and the connector and be done with it. Has anyone gone this route before and what was your experience? Thanks.

Bill

[Taifur]

Hi BillClark,

You should use HP harddisk for DL380-G3.You can upgrade harddrive to 146 GB

HARD DRIVES
Ultra320 SCSI â Universal Hot Plug
300-GB 15,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 411089-B22
300-GB 10,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 350964-B22
146.8-GB 15,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 347708-B22
146.8-GB 10,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 286716-B22
72.8-GB 15,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 286778-B22
72.8-GB 10,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 286714-B22
36.4-GB 15,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 286776-B22
36.4-GB 10,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 286713-B22
18.2-GB 15,000 rpm U320 Universal Hard Drive (1") 286775-B22

You can also check below link for supportin HDD with DL380 G3

http://www.globalonetechnology.com/HP_ProLiant_DL380_G3_Options_s/29.htm

If it helps, pls assign point.

Rgds//
Taifur

[WFHC-WI]

Hi Bill,

Using non-HP drives will likely mean no HP support for your server. I realize your G3 server is well beyond standard warranty so unless you have purchased an additional support agreement you don't have to be concerned with that.
I guess you have to ask yourself, "How critical is my server? Is the tradeoff in price worth the risk of downtime or data loss?"
I have successfully implemented non-HP drives in a ML370 (comparable to the DL380) but for experimentation only.

[BillClark22]

Thanks for the replies all. Just KILLS me that HP goes out of their way to make it difficult and profitable(for them only) and pull this sort of stuff. A SCSI drive should be a SCSI drive regardless who made it. Oh well, not MY money I'm spending. Still irks me though.

[Heironimus]

The big server and storage vendors often have hard drive firmware customized to improve performance for whatever they consider a standard usage pattern - a RAID controller with a big write-back cache might benefit from a different cache or read-ahead behavior than a single-spindle desktop with a plain SCSI/SAS card. Some also do burn-in tests to reduce the early-failure rates their customers see. So there actually are reasons that vendor-branded drives are more expensive, though I do think the prices are greatly inflated (though not nearly as inflated as RAM).