ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)
1748067 Members
5540 Online
108758 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

 
wobbe
Respected Contributor

Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

On all the new HP servers there is a sticker that says only use HP ULTRA320 Hard disks. But I still have a number of older ULTRA-3 disks that I would like to use. Is there a good reason not to use these older disks other then the reduced speed of the SCSI bus? I assume that the disks will work in a newer server type. Is perhaps HP trying to sell more ULTRA320 disks?
9 REPLIES 9
Oleg Koroz
Honored Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

This drive resolves customer issues regaring:
1. performance,
2. spindle count,
3. consolidation,
4. spares issues,
5 ... etc


http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/hotplug-ultra3/index.html


wobbe
Respected Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

It├в s very nice from HP to consider these customer issues. But all I care about is: will it work and more important will it be stable. It looks to me that HP is tying to sell more hard dis
Oleg Koroz
Honored Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

HP already selling U320 Drives for few Years, and all U320 are backward compatible to older servers with LVD support. Consumer gradually was prepared to move to U320 and all newer servers sold only with U320 Drives. There are not many places where U3 Drives still sold. Warranty for HDD is 3years, so normally to say all U3 drives would be out of warranty soon, what would be your benefits to pay for G4 server and use 50% degraded performance, with same effort G3 can be used. With commercial needs, would you rely to older hardware? How really you overstocked with U3 HDD or question where to use few of them? Everything moves quickly, size increased, speed faster, we have to accept the fact of changes.
wobbe
Respected Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

Kov, Are you working for HP? Sure sounds like it.
Some of us may have some older type hard disks on the shelf. I've got mine from a server upgrade. They can be put to good use in a server that doesn't rely on hard disk performance. If I could I would have bought a G3 but my supplier does no longer sell those. And I don't really car for the warranty because I have a good support contract that replaces all hard disk regardless of their age.

The way HP puts it; it looks like you can't use this older type of hard disk on a new server and it that it could damage the server. I want to know if this is true because up till now I don't really believe it. Just for fun I inserted a pair of u3 18gb disks into a G4 and it looks to me that is working. The server certainly didn't explode!
Devender Khatana
Honored Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

Hi,

Apart from possible performance it is no doubt not going to create any problems in your server. As it is downward compatible you can very well use it. The best utilization of these disks would to use these for some volumes which are used for non-critical data / having additional copy of important data.


HTH,
Devender
Impossible itself mentions "I m possible"
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

You can mechanically damage a slot that is designed for U320 disk drive carriers:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=PSD_EL021101_CW01
.
Ernest Ford
Trusted Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

You will need to visually verify the physical interchaneability of the disks - however from an electrical and SCSI compatibility angle, as long as they use the same connectors, they will work, albiet at reduced speeds. In most cases drives with different connectors can be used with suitable adapters. This backward compatibility is a requirement of the SCSI standard.

Having said that - be aware that HP has several proprietary extensions to the SCSI standard whose functionality may be lost when using generic SCSI drives, or HP drives that HP has deemed not compatible.

These are primarily management features such as capacity expansion, RAID level migration & stripe size migration and do not affect the security of your data - you simply lose the some of the flexibility that HP can provide with their tools.
wobbe
Respected Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

I now have a DL360G4 running with 9GB Ultra 3 hotpluggable disks. This works fine but there is a small problem and I'm not talking about the degraded performance. The housing of the older disks is a bit different and it pushes against the underside of the cdrom drive. The cdrom drive still works but it doesn├в t open as easy as it should. You have to help the cdrom drive a bit when you want to open
Devender Khatana
Honored Contributor

Re: Using Ultra 3 SCSI Disks in a DL360G4 or DL380G3

Hi,

This related to the physical layout of the machine. Which can not be suggested remotely. You will have to look at the phsical layout of the machine & will have to verify if you can move CD Drive to some free/spare slot so that it is not stucked anywhere during operations.

HTH,
Devender
Impossible itself mentions "I m possible"