Urgetn Help Specing a Server (RAID)

[rogerpatel]

Hello we need to urgent purchase a server and need some advice as its our normal setup.

We've decided to go for a DL series server, something like the DL 380 range.

Not worried about processor or memory, its the raid side we need help on.

The server needs to be 100% uptime, usually we would supply a P400 and 2 drives and use raid 1 mirror, or 6 drives and use raid 6 with adg.

In this case we would like to use the Raid duplexing feature. I just can ge my head around it. Does this mean that we setup two raid p400's and then setup two logical drives then mirror the acutall logical drives, so if one fail the other would keep going ?

Please explain in real basic details and also give me your suggestions as to which is my best method.

Thanks

[scharris_99]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked HP did not have dual channel hardware. I believe that they sell dual channel drives, but the servers are single channel so you can't duplex controllers.

[Joshua Small_2]

The duplexing you are referring to is that SCSI models of HP servers often have some of their drive bays connected to one RAID channel, and some to another. This means a channel reset will not bring the server offline.

No amount of redundancy here will prevent a motherboard failing on you, as unlikely as it is.

No amount of hardware will prevent you from, at a minimum, require regular shutdowns for maintenance and updates. If you really require 100% uptime, it's going to need to be a cluster.

[Joshua Small_2]

Just an addition to better answer your question...

You would use a single RAID card, and effectively connect everything like normal. You wouldn't actually buy anything additional.

If you look at the drive bays on the front of the server, they will be numbered in circles for channel 0, squares for channel 1.

If you were to create a RAID 1 mirror, where each drive was on a different channel, you would implement duplexing to its best potential.

Note that it is possible to cable the insides of your server so that it is a simplex configuration instead of duplex. The server will come with a little piece of paper telling you what to plug where to ensure this is not the configuration that you use.