K and A class burned down

[Donald Kok]

Hi Friends,

We all like challenges, right? So I'm a happy camper now, since the other day one of our buildings burned down. Besides lots of good mp3's (;-)) I also lost an K380 and an A400 class. The K380 had a 12H autoraid and an 2/20 tapelibrary (DLT's with 40/80)

So now I have to purchase new hardware, and I wonder what you would do in my case. Thinks that come to mind when I think about this are:

- The K380 is probably not deliverable.
- The K380 had enough capacity ( mem, CPU, I/O), however I could use more slots for scsi.
- The existing tapes must be reused.
- I have some ignite tapes, but I do not know (yet) if they are usable.

This is the oppertunity to upgrade from what I have (had). On the other hand I like to keep the cost in hand.

Thanks in advance
Donald

[Michael Tully]

Hi Donald,

Sorry to hear about your building :(

A lot of this will depend entirely on your budget.

You can't buy a K class any more, except used.
You should perhaps look to a minimum perhaps an L class (rp54xx) or depending on the number of slots required.

If you can with the amount of disk required look into a 'VA' class disk array or a clariion offering from EMC.
As far as tapes are concerned (ignite) you won't be able to use them to build a system from scratch, but you'll be able to use to get information off them, files from /etc /usr/local/bin
There are still some varieties of DLT drives around, they will be backwards compatible. (able to read your tapes)

[Vicente Sanchez_3]

Hi Donald,

First of all I'm sorry about your situation, but you know, "karma".

I think that the first is you need is work as you were working before the incident. So you can try to rent a K machine and enought disk space to recover your tapes. The A machine is still available so, you can buy one.

Once it's working you can buy new and better machines, and migrate your environment.

HTH, Vicente.

[Jesse Dougherty]

Hi Donald, sorry to hear about you loss. If you want a replacement refurbished K380 box, we have them, the prices start at $600.00 for the box. We also carry all HP peripherals for the K class servers. If you are interested, check out our
refurbished hardware price list at www.cypress-tech.com/specials.htm or feel free to give me a call.

Thanks
Jesse Dougherty
Cypress Technology, Inc
Re-Sellers of HP 3000/9000 products
12890 Automobile Blvd
Clearwater, FL 33762
727-557-0911 / fax 727-557-0014
jesse@cypress-tech.com
www.cypress-tech.com

[John Payne_2]

We have found that the newer a-class (rp2470) is much faster than the older K-class stuff. You just need to look at how many slots you really need. The drawback is that you likely will have to build the OS from scratch, as your ignite tapes will likely be no good to install to the newer hardware.

Hope it helps

John

[Donald Kok]

Thanks All for the reply's.

The windows boys are looking for SAN or NAS. In that case, I think I will ride with them with the diskarray and backup-hw.

Michael: I was thinking about an L1000 too.
Jeff: I am in the Netherlands, I bett this area has refurbished hw available too.

John: The A-class has too litle disk and scsi space.

Thanks all for the replys. Look forward to other tips

Donald

[Sean OB_1 · Accepted solution]

Donald,

What are you looking for in terms of SCSI?

An "A" class (rp24xx) will attache to any external array. For examply you can attach a D1000 with 12 bays to it using either plain scsi or a raid card.

This will give you 12x73gb disk space.

The rp24xx class has 4 pci slots available for cards.

The rp54 class has 12 slots for i/o cards so you can attach a ton of external devices to it. The rp54 can go up to 4 cpus (875mhz today) and 16gb ram.

HTH

Can you give us the details on your other machines?

How many CPU?
CPU speed?
RAM?
Internal disks?
External disks?

etc.

[Stan Sieler]

The new rp24xx systems
are quite inexpensive.

However, if you want to
get a K380, you might want to
check eBay:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&ht=1&query=k380

[Dave Wherry]

The K and the A class are both discontinued. They have been replaced by the rp series.
An rp2405 is quite a bit more powerful than your old A class system. It also is pretty inexpensive.
Depending on how many processors were in your K class system, something in the rp24xx line would likely do the job for you. If performance was starting to get tight you might need to go to an rp54xx.
You can find used A's and K's. However, if you are paying for support those costs will continue to rise. If you're doing the support yourself consider the availability of replacement parts.
The rp series are affordable. Reduced maintenance costs should help offset some of the purchase cost. And, I'm hoping there was insurance on the building and contents. That all should make it a no brainer to go with the new hardware.
It's also a good idea to take advantage of the situation and look at a SAN with the Windows folks. Depending on the capacity requirements the VA is a good choice. Or an MSA is also good. You have many good options available.

[Donald Kok]

Dear Friends,

Thanks for all your reply's.

This is what we are about to do:

We buy a SAN, and a lot of NT-pizaboxes.

The A and the K-model are both replaced by an RP2470, which each has two Fibre channel cards, and two gigabit cards. Each machine gets an DVD, DLT and DDS3 drive.

Thanks again for the valuable advise.
Donald