msa1000 errors with 300gb drives in raid5

[djevik]

I am working on an MSA1000, and I am unable to bind (13) 300GB U320 drives in a RAID5. The intention is to use the 14th drive as a hot spare, but I cannot get the unit to build.

I get an error message that the physical drive sizes are mismatched, and may result in at least a 10% decrease in volume, and that the unit cannot be created with the parameters given.

The command I used was add unit 0 raid_level=5 data="Disk101-Disk113"

However, when I replace the 300GB drives with 146gb drives, the unit builds without a problem. So, I physically checked each 300GB drive (looking at the p/n on the label), and they all show to be 300GB. I also ran the command show all disks and it also shows them all as being 300gb.
I am able to bind (7) 300gb drives in R5, however, even though it builds the unit, I still get the error about drive size mismatch.
I brought the firmware up to 4.3.2 and still get the same errors. I tried binding each drive as an individual unit, and they all show as 300gb..so it appears that all the drives are working correctly..I just cannot get the system to bind (13) 300gb drives in R5. any ideas?

[John Kufrovich]

I'll set something up in the lab and get back with you.

[John Kufrovich]

It appears a problem with cli.

Can you use the same cmd but add a size value.

size=2097151MB

Thanks,

[Jan-Erik Karlsson_2]

could it be something like different manufacturers of the disk's so that some have a different layout? i.e number of cyl's, heads and so on?

just a guess

[DragomirAtea]

Hmmmm!

It could be a limit of the Array size...

13 * 300 GB RAID 5 = 3,6 TB Raw capacity...

Could this be the problem...

Regards
Dragomir

[Greg Carlson · Accepted solution]

Djevik,

What is your environment that you are running in? What OS are you running? Also, since you are limited to 2TB logical drives on the array, you should look at splitting your array into two groups with their own logical drive. A failed drive on a 13x300gb Array will take a LONG time to rebuild 15-20min per gb rebuild time. You would be wise to split it up!

Ciao,
Greg

[djevik]

Thanks for the help everyone!
It was a size limitation of the logical volume..I split the logical partitions into 2 raid5 sets 6+1 x 2 and that worked great..anything over 2tb will not bind.

thanks again!

[djevik]

see above