SATA disk support on EVA

[Balakrishna Kotian]

Hi Everyone,

Does SATA disk support EVA's. I believe the highest disk capacity currently available in SATA is 450Gb or 400Gb. If supported by EVA does it supports whole EVA family. what is the difference or drawback in having SATA disk and how are they going to get plugged in to disk enclosure ( are the connectors are standard)

Thanks a lot of your time

Bala

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk to Storage Area Networks (SAN) (Enterprise). - Hp Forum Moderator

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

The EVA does not support "SATA" disk drives. HP uses a variant that they call "FATA" (Fibre Attached Technology Adapted). Those disk drives use the SCA40 Fibre Channel interface, so it can be mixed with high performance Fibre Channel disk drives in the same enclosure - a SATA disk uses a different interface and protocol (some kind of stripped down FC_AL).

I have talked to one of the EVA drive qualification engineers some time ago and he said that the FATA disks are more robust than the average SATA ones.

According to the latest specifications (30-SEP-2005) for the EVA6000, the only model currently available is 250GB. I have heard about larger ones, but apparently they are not ready, yet.

FATA disk drives are cheaper (at the expense of being slower) than the Fibre Channel disk drives and need to be in a disk group of their own. They are meant to store "reference data", that is data which is not being accessed frequently.

[Steven Clementi]

Bala:

Though I do not have any SATA drives in my EVA's, we have looked into the usage of them.

The EVA's 4/6/8k's support them and I believe the latest firmware's on the 3/5k support them.

The connector is the same so they plug right in to your existing enclosures.

The only thing you can't do is mix them in a DG with SCSI drives.

One drawback would be though good for "nearline" storage requirements, SATA disks are not meant for 24/7 operation at full duty cycle. In otherwords, don't try to run an Oracle database that gets heavily utilized on SATA disks. Use them for Nearline Storage, temporary backup's, snapshots, testing, etc...


Again, not having any.. I could be wrong a little or even a lot....


Steven

[Steven Clementi]

er, yea.. "FATA".

[Balakrishna Kotian]

Uew,
The functions of FATA disk are same but itâ s a slower disk as compared with RPM. We can use FATA disk in EVA as same as other high speed disk but follow the best practice by not mixing different performance in one DG. But can it remain in same enclosure. Rest configuration, RSS state and redundant level remains same as of other disk or does this also changes accordingly.

Bala

[Balakrishna Kotian]

Sorry typing mistake !! its for Uwe

[Uwe Zessin]

Yes, that's a good summary except that the EVA does not allow you to mix FC and FATA disk drives in a DG (you choose 'nearline' or 'online' for a DG).

Unlike some other arrays on the market, you can set up an EVA will FATA drives only.

[Balakrishna Kotian]

Does anyone know what is current capacity of FATA disk available(400/500GB). If possible can I get the part numbers for ordering.

Tnx
Bala

[Steven Clementi]

Bala:

It looks like the new drives are still not released yet.


250 GB FATA disk dual-port 2Gb/s FC Hybrid 364437-B23 as of August 15, 2005 in the quickspecs.

No sign of anything new on CDW yet, but I have an inquiry in to my sales rep.

Remember you need at least 8 to start off.


Steven

[Steven Clementi]

That would be... 364437-B22... for the onsite install model. B23 is for factory integration usually.

Steven

[Steven Clementi]

According to my sales rep, HP has not released them yet.

Steven

[Uwe Zessin]

I've heard somthing like december 2005 for FATA 400GB support, but it looks like the 500GB might not make it to the EVA3000/5000.