HP P4500 12TB SATA Storage System

[Yaboto]

I am designing a solution with the storage above and would like to confirm if it includes standard SAN features to allow connections with 15 servers and tape library.

HP sent me a configuration including that LeftHand Storage but I couldn't see any SAN switches within the quote, that would connect all the servers to the SAN.

Please Advice !

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk Array to HP StoreVirtual Storage / LeftHand . -HP Forum Moderator

[Uwe Zessin]

The P4000 series is an iSCSI (SAN) storage system that can use 1 or 10 GigaBit Ethernet. It does not use Fibre Channel SAN switches, if you expected them.

[Yaboto]

Thanks for your reply !

My next question is:

How would I connect HP MSL2024 Ultr 920 SAS Tape Library to the same iscsi SAN or iscsi Network ?

Is there any difference between NAS and iscsi ?

[Uwe Zessin]

You need a SAS HBA in the backup server. I have not heard that anybody has created a SAS/iSCSI bridge and the P4000 does not offer that service either.


In by book, iSCSI and Fibre Channel (FC) are SAN protocols which deals with blocks. The server 'sees' a block-addressable SCSI LUN.

NAS (don't get confused by the "N"etwork Attached Storage - just because an iSCSI-SAN uses Ethernet technology, too) is, simply put, "file sharing". Mostly using NFS and CIFS/SMB protocols.

[Yaboto]

Thank you very much. Your contributions are enlightening.

From your explanations, I realized that we don't need any Fiber Channel card ( HP BLc QLogic QMH2462 FC HBA Opt Kit) for each server again within the quotation.
Can you please confirm this ?

[Uwe Zessin]

Right, you certainly don't want FC adapters. You should replace them with traditional NICs, TOEs or even iSCSI HBAs (but you need to check the compatibility with the operating systems running on the blade servers). And check what device is (going into) the interconnect bays - a Fibre Channel switch won't help.