VA vs EVA

[Rajib Kundu]

Hi

Any body can provide any technical diff betwn HP VA and EVA product.
Thanks in advanced

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

[Peter Mattei]

The VA series were the premerger HP midrange arrays. They went EOL quite a while ago!

VA7100 2 Ports@1Gb/s, 15 Disks max, 1 Diskgroup
VA7110 2 Ports@2Gb/s, 45 Disk max. 1 Diskgroup
VA7400 2 Ports@2Gb/s, 105 Disks max, 2 Diskgroups
VA7410 4 Ports@2Gb/s, 105 Disks max, 2 Diskgroups

VAs support Business Copy (local copy/snapshot) but no Continuous Access (Remote Copy).
No dynamic LUN growth.

The EVA was developed by Compaq and became the HP midrange Array after the merger.

EVA4000 4 Ports@4Gb/s, 56 Disks max 1 to 32 disks groups
EVA6000 4 Ports@4Gb/s, 112 Disks max 1 to 32 disks groups
EVA8000 8 Ports@4Gb/s, 240 Disks max 1 to 32 disks groups

EVAs support Business Copy (local copy/snapshot/snapclone/mirrorclone) and Continuous Access (Remote Copy sync or async).
Dynamic LUN growth and much more available!

The EVAs are the current HP midrange arrays with very high availability and performance, rich set of features and is very popular: HP recently sold the 30000th EVA!!

Cheers
Peter

[Uwe Zessin]

> EVA4000 4 Ports@4Gb/s, 56 Disks max 1 to 32 disks groups

I wonder how you create 32 disk groups with only 56 disk drives as I thought you need at least 8 disk drives per disk group ;-)

Even if I divide 240 by 32, I get 7.5.
8 * 32 = 256

[Peter Mattei]

Uwe you are right of course; Thanks for your post.

First I have to admit that I made a typo and pasted it on and on!

The EVA firmware architecturally supports up to 16 (not 32) disks groups (DG)!!
16 DG, 8 disks per DG means 128 disks, which can only be reached with an EVA8000!

Anyway, we do not recommend buidling lots of DG.
Larger DG are better for performance and more space efficient.
Also see the EVA best practice whitepaper on:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/storage/arraywhitepapers.html

So, the correct EVA tables must look like this:

EVA4000 4 Ports@4Gb/s, 56 Disks max 1 to 16 disks groups (theoretically)
EVA6000 4 Ports@4Gb/s, 112 Disks max 1 to 16 disks groups (theoretically)
EVA8000 8 Ports@4Gb/s, 240 Disks max 1 to 16 disks groups

Cheers
Peter

[Mark...]

Sorry Peter,
You are correct about the max disks per system but:
EVA 3000/4000 max disk groups = 7
EVA 6000 max disk groups = 12
EVA 5000/8000 max disk groups = 16
Nither can do 16 because an EVA only supports a maximum of 120 per loop pair & the 4/6K only have one loop pair as they are the same controller really. A DG requires a minimum of 8 disks up to the maximum of the disks available or the limit on the box.
Regards,
- MARK -

[Peter Mattei]

Mark

That is exactly what I wrote above (EVA8k eample) and therefore I stated theoretically for EVA4k and 6k.
The XCS code actually does support 16 DG, the available physical disk do not!

Cheers
Peter