advantages of 641 and 642 over 6i controllers?

[Simon Jackson_1]

Hi

If for example you had a DL380 G4 with 6 U320 15K 72GB disks for use as a small exchange server.

RAID1 = OS
RAID1 = Databases
RAID1 = Logs

Can I do this with just the onboard 6i controller? What advantages would I get from purchasing a separate controller?

[Vijay_44]

Yes, you could create 3 different arrays with individual RAID 1 logical drives with the embedded 6i.
The DL380 G4 gives several options to duplex the back plane. You could duplex the backplane by using the two channels of the 6i or to get some performance gain you could throw in a PCI controller and duplex between the 6i and the PCI controller.
The duplex split is 2/4.

[Vijay_44]

Attached are some diagrams from the user guide.

[Simon Jackson_1]

Ok so if I were to add the 641 controller could I have the following config.

Duplex Channel 1
6i Controller
Disks 0,1 RAID1 for the OS

Duplex Channel 2
641 Controller
Disks 2,3 RAID1 for the databases
Disks 4,5 RAID1 for the transaction logs

Would I see a noticeable performance difference in doing this?
Would I see a noticeable performance difference if I used a more expensive card than the 641 controller? the 6402 for instance.

[Vijay_44 · Accepted solution]

You would get some performance increase using a 6i/641 duplex configuration. Comparing the 641 and the 6400 controllers: The 6400 would give you more flexibility for future expansion and has battery backed write cache out of the box. For the 641 you would need to get the option to add Battery backed write cache. The 6400 has up to 256 BBWC

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12067_na/12067_na.HTML
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11587_na/11587_na.HTML