Multiple drive arrays

[Craigcve]

Newbie question. - Is it possible to connect 2 x 4314 drive arrays to one ML 330 G3 server? If so, can they be configured RAID 5 as one volume? What controller(s) would be required?
Thanks in advance.

[wobbe]

A 6402 controller will probably do the tick.
But I doubt that is will be an supported configuration.

[Craigcve]

Aftab,

Thanks so much for the reply. I have a steep learning curve here, but this is what I have determined thus far. Please forgive my ignorance.

Current gear =
317821002 HP Proliant ML330 G3 server
190210001 4314T Enclosure
291967B21 642 Controller
14 x 286714B22 U320 10K 72GB hard drives

I would like to add =
1 more 190210001 4314T Enclosure
5 x 350964-B22 U320 10K 300GB hard drives

If I change the current controller to the 6404/256, buy one more SCSI cable to daisy chain the two enclosures together, I should have all I need, although I will need to add the new array as a seperate volume. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Craig

>HI Craig,

>I guess you are referring to MSA 30 which >is based on 4300 enclosure.

>ML330 g3 is a SCSI server and maximum >external storage capacity is
>External 29.400 TB (14 x 300 GB) x 7
>Requires additional SCSI controller in >slots)

>Raid accross channels or controllers is not >supported. So you can connect two different >MSA to two controllers or two external >channels but can not create single volume >out of two MSAs. you need to create two >seperate logical drives on two MSAs >attached.

>Also it should not exceed the maximum >external storage supported.

>Supported controllers as per your >requirement
>Smart Array 5302/128 Controller
>Smart Array 6402/128 Controller
>Smart Array 6404/256 Controller

>Check storage section in server quickspecs
>http://vb.net/products/HP/11614_div.html#Sto>rage

>hope this helps,
>thanks,
>Aftab

[Ali]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for sharing the detailed configuration.

Let me clarify the SCSI connections here.
SCSI controller / Smart array SCSI controller will support one enclosure per channel. this is due to SCSI wide bus standard which support maximum 15 devices 0-15 scsi ID. In 4314 enclosure you have 14 harddrives so all the scsi IDs are occupied. So you can not daisychain two MSA or storage enclosures. daisychaining is basically to connect tape drives and other devices keeping the total no of scsi devices supported on the wide SCSI bus.

Now once again look at the Maximum external storage supported in this server
External 29.400 TB (14 x 300 GB) x 7)

which means you can connect 7 fully populated MSAs with max of 300 GB hard drives.

Coming to smart array 6404/256 controller, It has 4 external channel which supports up to 56 drives. So you can connect 4 different MSAs.

Smart array 6404 controller quickspec
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11587_na/11587_na.pdf

So don't daisychain, connect enclosure directly to a external channel and create seperate logical drive per enclosure.

Hope this helps,

thanks,
Aftab

[Michael A. McKenney]

I have done RAID 1 across two controllers, one drive per controller. I would not do RAID 5 or 6 like that. Parity would be too difficult to calculate across two controllers. It would probably not work properly.

If you need that many drives in RAID 5, use a SAN. After 8 drives RAID 5 read performance levels off. Write performance will suffer and parity calculations could really kill performance.

[Craigcve]

RAID 5 should be ok if I establish each enclosure as a seperate volume, right?

[Ali]

Hi Craig,

Raid level implementation is based on your environment that depends on the application that you want to setup and the purpose of the server.

Raid 5 with 14 X 72 GB hard drives with 256 BBWC will give you good performance and in other enclosure 5 x 300 GB will give read and write performance.

BBWC will do the trick. It will help boost up write performance as well.large cache size will increase the write performance.

reference doc..
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00818421〈=en&cc=us&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=367226&prodTypeId=329290

thanks,
Aftab