Hello all,
What is the group's general opinion of the Storageworks 800 vs. the
newer Raid Array 10000? We've got several 800s attached to Alphaserver
8400s running Digital UNIX, and one RA7000 attached to some 1200s.
We're about to buy more, and the initial proposal includes RA10000
boxes. Storage is mostly set up as RAID 0+1.
Here's my concern:
Storage in our SW800s come in BA356 shelves attached to HSZ
controllers. In this setup, both the SCSI channel and power
run horizontally along a shelf:
-----------------------------
<-- SCSI Channel 0 -->
<-- Power 0 -->
-----------------------------
<-- SCSI Channel 1 -->
<-- Power 1 -->
-----------------------------
In the RA7000 we just bought (and presumably in the RA10000 we're
looking at) the SCSI channels run vertically, while the power
still runs horizontally along a row:
-------------------
| SCSI 0 | SCSI 1 | <- power 0 ->
-------------------
| SCSI 0 | SCSI 1 | <- power 1 ->
-------------------
| SCSI 0 | SCSI 1 | <- power 2 ->
-------------------
| SCSI 0 | SCSI 1 | <- power 3 ->
-------------------
| SCSI 0 | SCSI 1 | <- power 4 ->
-------------------
Now, we've made everything dual redundant, but my concern is this: in
the SW800 setup, by arranging disk mirrors or stripes vertically, we
gain the advantages of using multiple SCSI channels as well as having
different sets of power controllers power the members of the raid sets.
With the RA7000, if we want the SCSI channel separation we're forced to
use horizontal raid sets, which seems to mean a power failure along one
shelf or row could knock the whole set out (I can imaging scenarios
where one power controller on a "shelf" going bad could fry the other
one.) I suppose we could set things up diagonally, but that's
much too silly.
Any thoughts? Am I seeing this correctly? Such failures may be pretty
unlikely, but if we're bothering to make everything dual redundant and
clustered, we might as well worry about this, too.
Thanks,
-Bill
Received on Fri Apr 10 1998 - 16:38:23 NZST