Migrating from SA E200 to SA P400 controller

[Prakalejas]

I would like to migrate from crappy Smartarray E200 SAS controller to Smartarray P400.

Can I do this without reformating my RAID5 and reintalling OS? (OS-win2003)

[Johan Guldmyr]

Heya,

the raid configuration is stored on both the controller and the disks. So if you were to only replace the controller you would be fine.

Unsure if it works between the e200 and p400 series though. Maybe somebody else can confirm that.

[TTr]

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/smartarraye200/index.html

The model comparison / data compatibility at the bottom of the page has exactly what you need.

As mentioned the raid configuration is on the disks and the new controller will find it and bind the disks in the same configuration.

A couple of minor things to watch for.

One is that you will need to make adjustments in the BIOS on the boot controller order and boot disks.
The second is you may need to make similar adjustments in the OS about the hardware path of the boot device and other disk devices.

Also ensure that you buy the BBWC option for the P400. It makes a huge difference in the performance.

[Prakalejas]

So basically I can replace E200 with P400 and the SA bios will accept previous array configuration? But what about Windows, is the raid drivers for P400 the same as E200?

HP page sais: "Instant Upgrades to other Smart Array Controllers" - (Yes, SAS Smart Array controllers). No idea what this really stands for.

By the way, I have intel SSD on E200 but the performance at max is upto 90MB/s. COpy between RAID 5 and SSD limits to max 30 MB/s. Tryed enabling disabling cache, changing block size, reflashing SA firmware and so on - the performance is horrible.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Ah, nice website TTr :)

One good thing to do when doing this is to put in the array card in the server while it's still using the E200 controller.

Then you can install drivers/etc for it before you move the drives.

[TTr]

The SSDs may be an overkill here. The SSD speed is buffered by the speed of the interfase (SASSATA) and the port capacity of the SA controller. Are the SSDs 6G SAS drives? If so consider the P410 controller, it is newer and more powerful than the P400 and supports 6G SAS drives. They do not mention SA compatibility between the P410 and the E200 but it should still be there. The compatibility is valid across all SA controllers.

For the drivers, look into the HP drivers site to check if they are the same, otherwise you need to load the P400 drivers ahead of time.

"Instant Upgrades to other Smart Array Controllers". You can upgrade from "this" controller (E200) to other SA controllers.

[TTr]

The P410 quickspecs
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13201_div/13201_div.html

[Prakalejas]

SSD is not the problem, even at 1.5GBs (187 MB/s) link speed. If I could get such read speeds, I would be more than glad, but now I get only max 80-90 at best (I could not believe, that this is phisical limit for any type of media (SSD, HDD 10k)). IO benchmarks are awful also. And I can't find any real world benchmark results to compare the speeds of these controllers.
Most likely I'm going to buy used P400, so P410 is not an option right now.
The most frustrating point is upgrade time. If it only requires to add new card, boot OS, install new drivers, shutdown the server, swap cables to a new card, make changes in bios for new card, and boot OS, than it's OK, otherwise I have a problem...

by the way, thanks for your help, it's nice to have some outside support, especially from people with better knowledge and experience.