PL1600 and 3200 Controller

Hi,

I have seen a lot of information being given out here on the 1600 and the
3200 controller card and I am hoping someone out there can help me with a
few questions. The company that I am working for may be giving me a PL1600
with 3200 controller (SP340855-01). The system came with 9.1gig Wide Ultra2
SCSI drives. The one that I will be getting will have no drive's.

I went on to HP website to look up info on the 3200 controller and found
very little to nothing (A lot of dead links). My understanding is that the
controller dictates the size of the drive's and the amount of total size a
logical partition can be. Using the above system I was able to put in a
total of 6x9.1gig drives with no issue at work as a riad5 setup.

My questions are as follows:

1: what is the maximum logical drive size that the 3200 can have (I will
update the firmware to bring it up to current spec) in the case using 6x9.1
I was able to make a logical drive size of 54.6gig (give or take)

2: I was on the 1600 web page and found drivers for the 3200 but they all
seem to be windows drives (install after windows is loaded). I was not able
to find the drives needed to install when first setting up Windows 2000 when
you press the F6 key to install extra controller drives. Can someone please
point me in the right direction


Thanks for your help
Adam

See my responses inline ...

"Adam Raff" wrote in message
news:FBspd.12731$Vy.10120@trndny06...
Hi,

I have seen a lot of information being given out here on the 1600 and the
3200 controller card and I am hoping someone out there can help me with a
few questions. The company that I am working for may be giving me a
PL1600
with 3200 controller (SP340855-01). The system came with 9.1gig Wide
Ultra2
SCSI drives. The one that I will be getting will have no drive's.

I went on to HP website to look up info on the 3200 controller and found
very little to nothing (A lot of dead links). My understanding is that
the
controller dictates the size of the drive's and the amount of total size a
logical partition can be. Using the above system I was able to put in a
total of 6x9.1gig drives with no issue at work as a riad5 setup.

My questions are as follows:

1: what is the maximum logical drive size that the 3200 can have (I will
update the firmware to bring it up to current spec) in the case using
6x9.1
I was able to make a logical drive size of 54.6gig (give or take)

You can have up to 32 logical drives on that controller. I have used 36G and
73G drives on that controller. Your size will be limited by your budget for
drives.


2: I was on the 1600 web page and found drivers for the 3200 but they all
seem to be windows drives (install after windows is loaded). I was not
able
to find the drives needed to install when first setting up Windows 2000
when
you press the F6 key to install extra controller drives. Can someone
please
point me in the right direction

Windows (2000 and 2003) will recognise the controller during its
installation. There are no problems using the default windows cpqarray.sys
file. After you have your OS installed, and all your SP/Patches/Hotfixes
applied, run the Proliant Support Paq (PSP) 7.10A (That is the latest one)
and it will update your drivers to the latest versions.

Also, make sure that your SystemROM and Controller firmware are at the
newest levels. Oh, and by the way ... there is no support from HP on that
server for 2003 server. You can install it, but there are missing drivers
for some things (like the system management driver) ... I have shoe-horned
2003 on a 1600, but I didnt like it, so i went back to 2000 and am
completely satisfied with it.


Thanks for your help
Adam


Glad to help ...

- LC