Upgrade from MSA 1510i to 1500cs possible?

[Yury Magalif_1]

Hello all,

Both MSA 1510i and 1500cs have the same shelf, but different controllers and I/O modules. Ideally, I would love to be able to mix FC and ISCSI in the same shelf. Unfortunately, in Q&A for 1510i HP states:

"Q6. Can I have both Fibre Channel and iSCSI interfaces on the MSA1510i?
A6. No, the MSA1510i will support only iSCSI; controllers for the MSA1510i are different from the FC interface based MSA1500."

I would like to buy MSA 1510i and then later take out ISCSI I/O module and 1510i controller and replace with FC module and 1500cs controller in order to upgrade the MSA to 1500cs.

This was partially covered here:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=965890

1. However, does anyone know if this is now possible?

2. If it is possible, would there be data loss?

3. If it is possible, is it supported by HP?

Thanks!

Sincerely,
Yury Magalif

[Metadata]

Hi Yury,

The MSA1510i uses the same shelf as the MSA1500. The only differences between a MSA1510i and the MSA1500 are the controllers and the host i/o modules. So it should be possible to replace the controllers and the i/o modules in MSA1510i for MSA1500 controllers and i/o modules.

HP has not yet released any white papers or upgrade documents that tell you if you replace the controllers in the MSA1510i, what will have to the data on the drives after the upgrade. But to my knowledege the MSA1510i controllers are very similar controllers to the MSA1500 so it possible that you might not have to restore the data on the drives after a controller upgrade.

No upgrade kit part numbers have been release either, so it's not possible to tell if would be supported to upgrade to a MSA1500.

The MSA1510i has not been released yet, so it is still possible that HP might release a document that tells you if is supported to upgrade to MSA1500. I would suggest that you contact HP presales with these questions. The should be able to provide you with some answers.

Tom

[Allan D'Souza]

HP allows the migration of drives from a MSA1500 controller to a MSA1510i only. So your plan would not work in converting it to a MSA1500 unless you don't mind losing your data. You could always back it up and recreate your volumes after the conversion but that could be time consuming.

[Yury Magalif]

All,

Thank you for your help, it was very valuable!

Unfortunately, I could not award points, because I had a problem with my ITRC login, and the helpdesk issued me a new login.

Sorry about that.

Sincerely,
Yury Magalif