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#1
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Proliant Drive Trays
Are the drive trays of a Proliant DL380, 380 G2, RA4000 and RA4100
interchangeable? Do they fit mechanically, are the backplanes identical? I've seen white(ish) and black ones... Did HP/Compaq ever change them? If so, when? All hints welcome, maybe someone has a link to a timeline/spec comparison/compatibility list? Thanks a lot! cheers Heimo (on a beer budget, but still want to buy used-but-decent equipment) -- You never ask questions when God's on your side. |
#2
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Proliant Drive Trays
"Heimo Hetl" wrote in message ... Are the drive trays of a Proliant DL380, 380 G2, RA4000 and RA4100 interchangeable? Do they fit mechanically, are the backplanes identical? I've seen white(ish) and black ones... Did HP/Compaq ever change them? If so, when? All hints welcome, maybe someone has a link to a timeline/spec comparison/compatibility list? Thanks a lot! cheers Heimo (on a beer budget, but still want to buy used-but-decent equipment) -- You never ask questions when God's on your side. The newer U2/U3 U320 (metal with black handles) are interchangable across all the models you have listed, except for the RA4000. That uses the old-style tongue in groove trays, like the old 1600's, 3000's, 5500/6500. The systems that use the Ux trays have exposed backplaces, such that the drives connect directly to the backplane. The RA4000 has the typical slotted backplane that we are used to from the F and U series storage chassis, where the drive sits in the tray, and the tray connects to the backplane. At this point, i wouldnt spend any money an ANYTHING that didnt support the Ux drives. Im also trying to weed out my old PII/PIII based systems and bring everything into the P4 Xeon age (or Opteron). My future has SAS written ALL OVER IT. I just need the funds and sustained revenues to make it happen. =) - LC |
#3
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Proliant Drive Trays
NuTCrAcKeR wrote:
[...] drive trays of a Proliant DL380, 380 G2, RA4000 and RA4100 The newer U2/U3 U320 (metal with black handles) are interchangable across all the models you have listed, except for the RA4000. That uses the old-style tongue in groove trays, like the old 1600's, 3000's, 5500/6500. How about the RA4100? New style as well? And what about the current G5 boxes? At this point, i wouldnt spend any money an ANYTHING that didnt support the Ux drives. Im also trying to weed out my old PII/PIII based systems and bring everything into the P4 Xeon age (or Opteron). I just eBayed a few 360 and 380G2 for use as firewall (routing/packet filter) and mail (filtering relay) servers for two rather small outfits, 5 and 40 users, respectively. I think that 1.x GHz, some of them dual, PIIIs will cope with that easily and for some years to come. My future has SAS written ALL OVER IT. I just need the funds and sustained revenues to make it happen. This reminds me of my next endeavour, setting up centralised storage (read: SAN) for two MSSQL servers, Exchange and files. Currently, we have individual ATA (and one SATA) RAID1s, combined with one crappy PIII running E2K for 40 people. Not surprisingly, all applications are choking. I'm afraid, I will end up with individual SCSI RAID5s per server, as all SAN concepts I found will easily break my budget... =) Thanks a lot for the information, and may your revenue stream support your SAS plans! cheers Heimo -- You never ask questions when God's on your side. |
#4
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Proliant Drive Trays
"Heimo Hetl" wrote in message ... NuTCrAcKeR wrote: [...] drive trays of a Proliant DL380, 380 G2, RA4000 and RA4100 The newer U2/U3 U320 (metal with black handles) are interchangable across all the models you have listed, except for the RA4000. That uses the old-style tongue in groove trays, like the old 1600's, 3000's, 5500/6500. How about the RA4100? New style as well? And what about the current G5 boxes? yes, the 4100 uses the Ux trays. The G5's I have seen have variable storage options (depending on the model). For any G5 deployment, I would spec a SAS configuration. At this point, i wouldnt spend any money an ANYTHING that didnt support the Ux drives. Im also trying to weed out my old PII/PIII based systems and bring everything into the P4 Xeon age (or Opteron). I just eBayed a few 360 and 380G2 for use as firewall (routing/packet filter) and mail (filtering relay) servers for two rather small outfits, 5 and 40 users, respectively. I think that 1.x GHz, some of them dual, PIIIs will cope with that easily and for some years to come. My future has SAS written ALL OVER IT. I just need the funds and sustained revenues to make it happen. This reminds me of my next endeavour, setting up centralised storage (read: SAN) for two MSSQL servers, Exchange and files. Currently, we have individual ATA (and one SATA) RAID1s, combined with one crappy PIII running E2K for 40 people. Not surprisingly, all applications are choking. I'm afraid, I will end up with individual SCSI RAID5s per server, as all SAN concepts I found will easily break my budget... are you looking at doing any clustering ? With 2 SQL servers, I certainly WOULD! Shared local storage is a requirement (this can be on a SAN), and I have built and deployed many clusters using RA4000s, including several for myself with my own equipment. Part of your performance problem is that you are using ATA drives whose RAID controllers *typically* do not have hardware based X/OR parity engines on them. They rely on drivers and the OS to do the parity calculation which slows things down. The same is true of most entry level SATA raid controllers as well. The fact is that RAID1 on these things gives you redundancy, but not performance. How much storage do you need for your (i assume) 4 servers? What is your budget? I can probably help you come up with a functional alternative that you can afford, and from a performance standpoint, will obliterate what you are using now. - LC |
#5
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Proliant Drive Trays
NuTCrAcKeR wrote:
yes, the 4100 uses the Ux trays. Thanks! This makes http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...35580&sspagena me=ADME:B:AAQE:1 look like an error, especially after looking at http://din-tech.e717.net/product/ra4000.htm. are you looking at doing any clustering ? With 2 SQL servers, I certainly WOULD! One is SQL2K, the other a 2K5, as applications require it this way. Part of your performance problem is that you are using ATA drives whose RAID controllers *typically* do not have hardware based X/OR parity engines on them. They rely on drivers and the OS to do the parity calculation which slows things down. The same is true of most entry level SATA raid controllers as well. The fact is that RAID1 on these things gives you redundancy, but not performance. I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, the current RAID1 setup actually costs performance, but then, it wasn't me who built it this way. How much storage do you need for your (i assume) 4 servers? The two SQLs need less than 100GB each with moderate growth, Exchange a little less, files maybe a bit more. While the SQLs and Exchange are being used in a more transactional way - read: random access, files are more sequential by nature, especially when considering the limited number of users. So, theoretically, a cheaper, SATA solution would suffice for files. So this is why I'm thinking of centralised storage, because individual redundant subsystems for each machine are neither cheap (in total) nor flexible. If I don't take the SAN route, can I share a RAID subsystem among servers? What is your budget? I can probably help you come up with a functional alternative that you can afford, and from a performance standpoint, will obliterate what you are using now. Around $4k total... Any advice is greatly appreciated! cheers Heimo -- You never ask questions when God's on your side. |
#6
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Proliant Drive Trays
"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote My future has SAS written ALL OVER IT. Good. Not that there's much choice about it, but that at least shows you understand the hardware. Part of your performance problem is that you are using ATA drives whose RAID controllers *typically* do not have hardware based X/OR parity engines on them. They rely on drivers and the OS to do the parity calculation which slows things down. The same is true of most entry level SATA raid controllers as well. The fact is that RAID1 on these things gives you redundancy, but not performance. Nice technical explanation, but beyond most people. Can we please stick to "SATA is ****". (No offence intended BTW - it's jus that I've seen too manay people buy SATA just because it's available and cheap) SATA disks fail about 6 times more frequently than SCSI disks. This makes the likelyhood of being able to recover a RAID after the failure of a SCSI disk about 36 times more likely than the likelyhood of recovering a RAID after the failure of a SATA disk. |
#7
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Proliant Drive Trays
Jez T wrote:
Nice technical explanation, but beyond most people. Can we please stick to "SATA is ****". (No offence intended BTW - it's jus that I've seen too manay people buy SATA just because it's available and cheap) No offense intended, either, but I wouldn't second that. I've got a few ATA and SATA running at home 24/7 for years now with no signs of wear. Contemporary SATA may give you quite good sustained sequential read performance which makes them perfectly suitable for standalone, single user use as is typically encountered in desktop applications. However, Nutcracker stated - correctly IMHO - that most *typical* (S)ATA RAID controllers suck in that they rely on host CPU and OS for much of the calculating load, which severely lowers performance. Also, mostly due to lower RPMs and an inferior bus protocol, they fall behind comparable flavors of SCSI in scattered, random access performance. There are some SATA RAID subsystems, e.g. from Raidsonic, that sport external SCSI and/or IEEE1394 host interfaces, which by design are not subject to the former of the two limitations. These systems may be apt for file servers, but I wouldn't want to use them for transational databases. cheers Heimo -- You never ask questions when God's on your side. |
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