HP MSA 2050 spare disk question

[adam900331]

Hy!

I am new in HP MSA world and I have question about spare disk. In theory I have an MSA 2050 storage with the following disk config:

- 8 pieces 1Tb SAS disk in Virtual Disk Group on POOL A

- 6 pieces 500Gb SSD disk in Virtual Disk Group on POOL B

I would like to add 8 pieces 1.8Tb disk with new Virtual Disk Group to POOL A (7 disk in RAID5, 1 spare disk)

When I config spare disk will it be ,,global spare,,? Or can I config the spare disk which is related to only the new Virtual Disk Group?

Thanks.

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. HPE MSA 2050 SAN Storage

2. HPE MSA 2050 User Guide

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[adam900331]

Thanks, but it is not answer to my question.

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

@adam900331 

For virtual storage, all spares are global spares. This will be configured at the Sytem level which means any VDG can use this spare drive if found compatible drive got failed part of VDG.

To answer your question, you can't dedicate a spare drive specific to any VDG in Virtual array. This was possible with Linear array where we use vdisk.

There is another type of spare also possible which is called Dynamic Spare. Please go through SMU and Command Line guide for more details.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

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[adam900331]

Thanks @SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1.

In my scenario, If one 1.8Tb disk fails, the 1.8Tb disk automatically acativate themselves to the Virtual Disk Group?

When one of the disk fails in the 8 pieces of 1Tb SAS disk, the 1.8Tb SAS disk cannot activate themselves in this group because of the incompitable disk? (The 'tb disk size different from 1.8tb disk size).

Thanks.

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1 · Accepted solution]

@adam900331 

If you configure 1.8TB SAS drive as Global spare then any VDG having same type and size drive failure or smaller size same type drive failure situation then VDG reconstruction will start automatically as per the RAID level configured.

Please note if you configure 1TB SAS drive as Global spare and you have one VDG which was prepared with 1.8TB SAS drives then in that situation VDG reconstruction will not start because 1TB SAS drive size is less than 1.8TB SAS drive.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

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[adam900331]

Thanks!

[JonPaul]

@adam900331 
Please review the MSA Best Practices Guide, https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00015961enw?jumpid=in_lit-psnow-red , and MSA Virtual Storage tech reference, https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00087404enw . Before you add a new disk-group.  There are recommendations about RAID levels and number of drives in the disk group which depending on your workload can make a difference.
RAID 6 would be recommended
Disk quantities that result in a "power of 2" number of data drives will benefit sequential WRITE workloads.
Your 1TB drives should be discovered as MDL-SAS drives and would be an Archive tier
The 1.8TB drives are Enterprise SAS and will be a Standard Tier
The SSD drives would be a performance tier,  a 500GB capacity point was not sold by HPE this could be a typo from 400GB or may be drives which are not qualified by HPE.