ML370G5, P400 and multiple drive cages

[Bob Pace]

Hello

I have a customer that has a ML370G5 with the expansion drive cage (total of 16 SAS drives). They want to connect all 16 drives to a single P400 controller (to creat 2 drive mirror set and 13 drive RAID5 with a single spare).

I do not have access to a server and can't tell from the documentation if this is
possible with the cabling. The users guide shows two cables running from the p400 to connectors but I can't tell if this is for both cages or just one

They have a second controller in the machine but if they use this it wouldn't let them create the volumns they want.

Any help would be appreciated

[Rajashekar Chintakunta]

Hi Bob,

The P400 controller can support max of 8 devices. As we have 16 Harddrives in 2 cages, we need to use two P400 controllers.

Has we are using two P400 controllers, I feel we cannot combine the disks to be part of one single volume. The controller 1 will detect 8 drives and other 8 by second controller. We can only create a logical drive that is visible on one controller. So I feel that we will not be able to create a Raid 5 with 13 disks.

HP Smart Array P400 Controller quick specs:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12400_div/12400_div.HTML

Regards,
Raj.

[Edmund White]

The P400 can address 18 disks.

[Sanjay Nayak]

Hi Bob,
First we would need to ensure if it is a P400 or a P400i controller.If you look into the quick specs

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12400_na/12400_na.HTML

P400 - 18 drives
P400i - 6 drives