HP StorageWorks MDS600 Questions

[RimBlock]

They are regular HP trays, so plan on $5 or so every time you add a drive - there are millions of these floating around so there is no need to buy them until you need them. They are very simple trays - no interposers.

If you are using SATA drives, you'll use one SFF-8088 port for each bank of 35 drives. With dual-ported SAS drives you'd double up for speed and redundancy - using two SFF-8088 ports per 35 drives. Your maximum throughput will be around 1GB/second per bank of 35 drives, 2GB/second total** - or double that if you are using dual-ported SAS drives. If you think about it, most STH readers would buy one of these to get an ultra high quality place to stuff a huge quantity of large SATA drives to use as bulk storage. For that use case, 2GB/second is more than enough.

**HP also talks about a "high performance cabling" option which is an x8 SAS connection through a SAS switch that will offer double throughput, but that appears to work only with very specific combinations of equipment.

Hi DBA,

How are you calculating the 1GB/s per port on SATA ?. Does the controller maintain a 3Gb/s link (*4) with the MDS600 even if SATA drives are used ?

Cheers
RB

 

[mrkrad]

the MDS600 is the older version (current is MDS6000) which in most SAS expanders results in a step down in speed (3gbps PER SAS drive or 1.5 SATA to each sas expander chip).

The P812 can connect 4 times to this box, but the o/s support (dunno, maybe 2012?AIX?) 12gbps per connection.

Keep in mind it is not normal to connect two servers to this box (35 drives each), it is normal to use the HP SAS switch to connect say 1 or two blade system (matrix) to these. Using zoning you can then give out a lot of DAS for say backup or tiered archival use of data (RISS/ILM). That is how they were designed to be used.

In fact you can slide out half the drives and have variant with servers on one side and storage on the other.

The power draw is immense but most folks are running 208 to 240volt single phase or 208 3-phase in DC (C7000 uses 3phase) so those wattage numbers aren't so bad if you are talking higher voltage. (208 single phase is one leg off 277 3-phase)

 

[RimBlock]

Yep, just trying to work out the 4x 1.5Gb/s = 4x 150MB/s = 600MB/s per 4 lane connector. Not sure where the 1GB/s comes in.

Probably missing something obvious but has been a long week .

Each I/O has two ports. Are they enforced as one in and one out or can you do both in so each I/O module can be double connected ?.

Cheers
RB

 

[Hammer]

No pics of the setup yet, but should i decide to actually 'set up' this, I can surely take pics. Right now, I'd placed it and a DL160 on a pallet for testing, 'cause I needed to know more info about what I'd just bought, before it was too late to return it, or before I sunk more money into something that wasn't going to be worthwhile or accomplish my goals. Part of me says to cut my losses, and just go shopping for some MSA60's or even better, some D2600's...

If there is anything specifically that you would like a better look at, LMK, and I can take some pictures of it. I'm not likely to get rid of it anytime soon, 'cause right now, I could still write off the roughly $400 I've got in it, and not hurt too much, so it isn't likely to be worth the time to put it back on ebay or package it for shipping. I've got plenty of rack space, so it could just sit in a rack and stay out of the way, if I decide not to use it.

I'd really prefer something much faster than 1.5 Gb/s, and physically, I don't see enough of a difference between this and the newer D6000 such that I couldn't convert the important parts over to the 6G version, but that may be my ignorance too. I will have to look into the availability of the internal components for the D6000, to find out how much it would cost to 'upgrade', 'cause the big heavy parts look to be the same in all the manuals I can find so far. I'm thinking that it will only entail replacing the I/O modules and the backplanes, but I need to further dissect this one for more info (yes, if/when I take this one apart, I WILL take plenty of pictures!).

Per the HP manual, this model can't be zone-edited without an HP SAS switch, although I don't know how accurate that is. All of their instructions on how to edit zones starts with the web console of the SAS switch, but much like their other stuff, they never intended for these to be used by anyone who didn't drink all of the HP BladeSystem Kool-aid, so they are understandably not written for anyone to do otherwise, nor are they supported for anything other than that. We're pretty much on our own

They do specify that using many other HP controllers is ok for the smaller non-BladeCenter-specific storage arrays, but I didn't check the dates on that documentation, so I don't know what may supersede what. These do seem to have some issues that force them to be much more Blade-friendly, & I'm not willing to purchase an HP SAS switch, just to be able to use those features, as long as there was no pre-existing zoning on mine I needed to remove to access some bays.

If the interface was faster, I wouldn't mind filling it up with 10K or even 15K drives, but first, I need to get a faster interface

OnCall, thank you for all the information you have provided on this thread. I am thinking about purchasing one of these and wanted to see if you can help me answer the following questions:

1) With an MSD600, are SATA drives limited to 1.5 Gb/s? Did you have any luck upgrading the SAS modules to achieve 3.0 Gb/s? If so, what HP part numbers does one need? SAS module and backplane needs to be upgraded?

2) Did you have any luck swapping out the stock fans so it is less noisy?

3) Does this work with non-HP cards like an Areca 1880 or 1882?

4) I know I'll need an HP card to flash the firmware. What is the minimum HP card that can serve this purpose?

5) Any other words of wisdom you can pass along?

Thank you for your help!

Hammer

 

[_Adrian_]

1) 3GB/s is standard and is limited by controller and not by enclosure

2) Fans aren't interchangeable as they are "ducted smart fans" and they are 3 phase motors

3) I don't see why not, one thing you may want to consider is the maximum number of drives it supports per link

4) HP P800 or HP P700m

5) Make sure you get the rack rails with the unit, as it must be supported properly or the drawers wont open, close or latch in place properly.
Also when the drawer is open the fans will "run up" to maximum speed to keep things cool... back to my note above.

I run one of these alongside my C7000 as well as an MSA70

 

[DaveBC]

Hey everybody! I have many things to post about, but in the short term I'm wondering if anyone has
CP016549.scexe (MD5 c17234f0ca5b932c5fa17c76b1149fc8) on hand? Google says it should be in ftp.hp.com/ftp2/pub/softlib2/software1/sc-linux-fw-array/p1255957429/v74127/ but that directory appears empty to me.

 

[Leopold Plesiutschnig]

While this is an old thread, I want to add a bit of experience:

1.) CPQ16549 is available at Drivers & Software - HPE Support Center.

2.) I bought what was advertised as an SSA70 but seems to be an MD600 on eBay for a few bucks and tested it quite thoroughly with an LSI2008 based controller:
- 3TB disks work like a charme, I have not seen reliability issues with big (7x 10Disk RAID6)
- While SATA Disks will handshake to 1.5GBit/s with the SAS expander, the expander will handshake 4x3Gbit/s with the controller. This means, that if you hit enough disks, you will actually be able to pull something like 11Gbit/s per drawer, i.e. ca. 22Gbit/s per box.