MSA1000 configuration

[sameerK]

Hello
I am installing MSA1000 storage having 3 disk enclosures.Each disk enclosure has 14 146GB hdds.If I create one array of all the disks and create logical drives? will ther be performance issue? how many logical drives can we create in one array? what is advisable - to create multiple arrays or one single array of disks

[Steven Clementi]

Last I checked, you can create up to 32 logical drives on an MSA controller. 32 total.


As for performance, depending on your application, you might get better performance having all the disks working at your data (more spindles = better performance).

For redundancy purposes, it would be better to have multiple arrays vs. a sinlge array. I say this because, the maximum protection you can have is a 2 disk failure simultaniously. (RAID ADG).

A single array configuration would yeild the MOST usable storage, but provide the least amount of redundancy.

Another limitation that may have been removed by now, but I think it wasn't is that you can only delete a logical drive if there are no others after it. WHat I mean is, assume you have 3 logical drives in 1 array. You can delete Logical drive 3, but you can NOT delete logical drive 2 UNTIL you delete logical drive 3.

Having 1 Array with 32 logical drives AND having to delete logical drive 2 means that Logical drives 3-32 need to be hacked and restored.


My advice:

Create multiple arrays (and incur some additional usable space loss) to have better redundancy. If you need to have BIG Logical drives, use OS/software based volume management to achieve greater then 2TB drives.


Steven