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Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

 
Gerry Downey
Frequent Advisor

Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Hello,
Does anyone know if the DS10 (not DS10L)will support 300gb disks in the front access storage cage? I've searched the options lists but could not find any information.

Thanks,
Gerry
9 REPLIES 9
Shriniketan Bhagwat
Trusted Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Hi,

Not sure about whether DS10 supports 330GB disks or not. Below link may be usefull for you.

http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/archive/ds10/ds10_tech.html

Regards,
Ketan
Khee Chan
Advisor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Largest SCSI drive that I have used on a DS10, DS15 & XP1000 (OVMS v8.3) is 147Gb and that's only because the 300Gb drives were too expensive at the time (early 2009). The SCSI controller for the front access cage uses the AIC7860 chipset (same as on an Adaptec 39160 U160 SCSI card).

So just try it assuming your DS10 is not currently running production applications.

1) Mount your disk in a suitable Storageworks hotswap carrier and insert it into a spare slot in the front access cage.

2) Rescan the SCI bus for new drive: MCR SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE

3) Check for new drive: SHOW DEV DK

4) Assuming new drive is DKA100: SHOW DEVICE DKA100: /FU

5) Initialise new drive: INIT DKA100:
Volker Halle
Honored Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Most any random SCSI drive of up to a tebibyte capacity should work with OpenVMS Alpha, presuming you're running V7.3-2 onwards and with patches, and potentially earlier releases.
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

> Most any random SCSI drive of up to a
> tebibyte capacity should work [...]

And if it doesn't dissipate more power than
a supported drive, then it might not melt if
you install it in the box.
Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

As much as I like the AlphaServer DS10 boxes, we're talking about decade-old computing gear here.

AFAIK, thermals have not been a particular issue with the Universal series disks and the front-mount storage cages involved here.

There can be some hot Universal drives, but that tended to be behind some big storage arrays with some big servers with big processing.

Not what you usually find with an AlphaServer DS10.

If you actually do manage to drive an AlphaServer DS10 and its I/O path hard enough to heat your disks past 50C or so consistently - that's around where studies at Google and CMU saw the longevity knee with thermals - and do manage to fry your disk, at the vintage of this gear, well, you replace the pieces.

By then, disks and DS10 boxes are even cheaper.

Or you figure out why you're pounding on your I/O so hard with a DS10 box; whether this is appropriate hardware for your application.

And yes, do keep backups.
Shriniketan Bhagwat
Trusted Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Hi,

As Hoff said, VMS supports the LUNs of capacity upto 1TiB till V8.3-1h1 and upto 2Tib from V8.4. I have connected and tested the LUN of capacity 1.46 TiB on ES40 recently on VMS E8.4. Did you try connecting 330 GB disk to your DS10 machine?
Did $ MC SYSMAN IO AUTO command able detect the disk?
Are you able to see the disk?

Regards,
Ketan
Gerry Downey
Frequent Advisor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Unfortunately we dont have any 300gb disks to try in the DS10. Thats why I was hoping someone would give me a definite yes before we purchase them.
Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: Alpha DS10 and 300gb disks

Based on the support matrix for this server:

http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/options/asds10/asds10_options.html

The 3R-A4952-AA (350964-B22) is supported. That's a 300 GB 10K drive. Also supported is the 3R-A6726-AA, which is a 15 K 300 GB drive.

I'll leave you to map those part numbers over to the part numbers for whatever particular 300 GB Universal disk brick you're looking to install here.

Going price for an HP-branded 300 GB 10 K RPM SCSI Universal disk looks to be around US$400 on the surplus market.

I can understand your hesitation on purchasing this stuff.

US$400 does seem comparatively expensive, particularly given UltraSCSI isn't all that fast and given 300 GB isn't all that much capacity as compared with the one- and two-terabyte spindles disks that are commonplace on various OSs for online archival storage, and given that the Intel SSDs in that same US$400 price range feature capacities around 160 GB and are far faster.

Of course getting modern storage gear hooked onto this decade-old AlphaServer DS10 box would certainly more than make up for the price difference and would support that US$400 price.