Replacing 10K with 15K drives on Proliant servers

[nithia pillay]

Is there any affect with replacing a faulty 10K drive with a 15K drive with regards to raid 0, 1 and 5.

I don't see a problem but does anybody have a official statement from HP

[dms_1]

Hi,

there is no problem to mix 10 and 15K:

HP 15K disk drives provide an unparalleled level of performance improvement over current 10,000 rpm (10K) drives. The HP 15K hard disk drive accesses data an average of 26% faster than current 10K drives, resulting in improved productivity and profitability. In addition to the increased access times, the 15K drives deliver a 33% improvement in Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) over 10K drives. Servers with multiple drives handling large numbers of transactions benefit from this increased IOPS performance.

HP 15K drives deliver this extraordinary performance with no more power consumption or cooling requirements than the 10K hard drives, allowing easy integration for this class of drive in existing platforms and applications without having compatibility issues or requiring cabinet power and cooling changes.

HP drives will feature the Ultra320 interface and 1" high form factor, available in capacities as high as 300GBs. Because Ultra320, Ultra3 and Ultra2 all operate on the Low Voltage Differential (LVD) electrical platform, the protocols are completely data compatible, allowing the interfaces to be mixed and matched with one another. "Mix and match" means all LVD controllers and drives will interoperate, continuing one of the industry's strongest investment protection stories ever told.

The 15K hard drives are compatible across most HP ProLiant servers, AlphaServers, and the StorageWorks 4300 families of external storage solutions. With 15K Universal drive compatibility across the enterprise, users are free to deploy and re-deploy these drives anywhere storage capacity is needed. This results in investment protection and simplification for our customers.

[nithia pillay]

Agreed, but do we have an official statement from HP

[MT19]

Hi Nithia -

HP does say you can mix 10K with 15K, but what will happen is your 15K drives will perform at 10K. So you will not be taking full advantage of the 15K performance of your 15K drives if you mix them with 10Ks.

[TTr]

It depends what enclosure you are planning to install the 15k drives. If the enclosure (or server internal bay) supports 15k drives then you will have no problem getting coverage from HP.

Some enclosures can NOT handle the 15k drives simply because the 15k drives generate a lot of heat and the enclosure may not be able to dissipate.

As Mark said if the 15k drive is in the same RAID volume with 10k drives you will not be taking advantage of it.