How to add a new disk chassis to 3PAR 10400(v400) ?

[jack]

Does 3PAR 10400 support to add several magazines with a new chassis when there are few free magazines slot in the current chassis?

In other word, what is the guideline or best practice for adding new disks/magazines/chassis?

what's the order when install new chassis and magazines？

what's the FC cabling order between the new chassis and 3PAR 10400 nodes (2 nodes)?

In the "HP 3PAR StoreServ 10000 Storage Physical Planning Manual", I could not find these information.

Thank you.

[MammaGutt]

You ask a lot of questions without a specific scenario.

What was normal in the legacy days of V class was that you installed chassis/cages to match your set size. The "normal" set size way-back-when was R5 (3+1) and R6 (6+2) meaning you would/should always install 4 and 4 cages per node pair, which matched with adding one FC HBA per node during each upgrade.

Once you had a nice system with a multiple of 4 cages per node pair, you would install one mag per chassis/cage. That would ensure you could maintain a perfect balance and HA cage. If/when you got to the point where all slots were full in all chassis/cages you would in a best case scenario add full chassis/cages with identical configuration as the other chassis/cages on the node pair/system to ensure that the system was balanced and you avoided hot spots. If that was an upgrade too steep, you could also move magazines between chassis/cages to achieve the balance. Keep in mind, moving magazines on a V class is not a straight forward job.

There is no issues adding chassis/cages before existing cages are full. However, all cages _must_ have at least two magazines installed.

Btw, why are you still fidling around with an old V class? Parts cost a fortune, the system costs a fortune, you need a shitload of space, power and cooling for something you could achieve for a fraction of the cost with a 7k or 8k system. I'm even pretty sure that at least the 8k would be faster.... perhaps even the 7k as well (unless it's a 7200).

[jack]

You ask a lot of questions without a specific scenario.

What was normal in the legacy days of V class was that you installed chassis/cages to match your set size. The "normal" set size way-back-when was R5 (3+1) and R6 (6+2) meaning you would/should always install 4 and 4 cages per node pair, which matched with adding one FC HBA per node during each upgrade.

Once you had a nice system with a multiple of 4 cages per node pair, you would install one mag per chassis/cage. That would ensure you could maintain a perfect balance and HA cage. If/when you got to the point where all slots were full in all chassis/cages you would in a best case scenario add full chassis/cages with identical configuration as the other chassis/cages on the node pair/system to ensure that the system was balanced and you avoided hot spots. If that was an upgrade too steep, you could also move magazines between chassis/cages to achieve the balance. Keep in mind, moving magazines on a V class is not a straight forward job.

There is no issues adding chassis/cages before existing cages are full. However, all cages _must_ have at least two magazines installed.

Btw, why are you still fidling around with an old V class? Parts cost a fortune, the system costs a fortune, you need a shitload of space, power and cooling for something you could achieve for a fraction of the cost with a 7k or 8k system. I'm even pretty sure that at least the 8k would be faster.... perhaps even the 7k as well (unless it's a 7200).

Hi MammaGutt,
Thanks a lot for your reply. My manager says this is a high-end Storage and we would use it for more 3 years, that's why I need add more space to it.

The scenario is:
2 nodes with 6 chassis (cages), the magazines numbers in these are 10 10 9 9 9 9 from chassis 0 to 5.
I want to install 2 chassises with 13 magazines.

New questiones are:
1.Is my scenario supported ?
2.If the magazines number is not acceptable, which number is good and also bigger than 13 (we need install at least 52 hdd)?
3.which slot and port should I connect the 2 new chassises 4 ports?

Thank you again!

[MammaGutt]

1. Yes, but system will be unbalanced (which it already is).
2. It will work but the system will try to write the same amount of data to each cage. So if you have a cage with 5 FC mags and a cage with 10 FC mags, each drive in the 5 mag cage will get 2x the amount of data and possibly create a hot spot.

3. You should have 2 FC HBAs for your 6 cages. One should be full and the other should have 2 available ports per node. Use those.

[jack]

1. Yes, but system will be unbalanced (which it already is).
2. It will work but the system will try to write the same amount of data to each cage. So if you have a cage with 5 FC mags and a cage with 10 FC mags, each drive in the 5 mag cage will get 2x the amount of data and possibly create a hot spot.

3. You should have 2 FC HBAs for your 6 cages. One should be full and the other should have 2 available ports per node. Use those.

I'll try to apply 5 more magazines, hence I can put 9 magazines to each of the 2 new cages.

As "showcage -d" command displayed, the ports I should use and the connection method are:
new cage6: A0 to 0:3:3, B1 to 1:3:3
new cage7: A0 to 0:3:4, B1 to 1:3:4
Is this correct?

Code: Select all

% showcage -d
Id Name  LoopA Pos.A LoopB Pos.B Drives Temp  RevA RevB Model Side
 0 cage0 0:3:1     0 1:3:1     0     40 25-31 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 1 cage1 0:3:2     0 1:3:2     0     40 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 2 cage2 0:6:1     0 1:6:1     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 3 cage3 0:6:2     0 1:6:2     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 4 cage4 0:6:3     0 1:6:3     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 5 cage5 0:6:4     0 1:6:4     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a

-----------Cage detail info for cage0 ---------

Position: ---

Fibre Channel Info PortA0 PortB0 PortA1 PortB1
        Link_Speed  4Gbps     --     --  4Gbps

-----------Cage detail info for cage1 ---------

Position: ---

Fibre Channel Info PortA0 PortB0 PortA1 PortB1
        Link_Speed  4Gbps     --     --  4Gbps
......

[MammaGutt]

1. Yes, but system will be unbalanced (which it already is).
2. It will work but the system will try to write the same amount of data to each cage. So if you have a cage with 5 FC mags and a cage with 10 FC mags, each drive in the 5 mag cage will get 2x the amount of data and possibly create a hot spot.

3. You should have 2 FC HBAs for your 6 cages. One should be full and the other should have 2 available ports per node. Use those.

I'll try to apply 5 more magazines, hence I can put 9 magazines to each of the 2 new cages.

As "showcage -d" command displayed, the ports I should use and the connection method are:
new cage6: A0 to 0:3:3, B1 to 1:3:3
new cage7: A0 to 0:3:4, B1 to 1:3:4
Is this correct?

Code: Select all

% showcage -d
Id Name  LoopA Pos.A LoopB Pos.B Drives Temp  RevA RevB Model Side
 0 cage0 0:3:1     0 1:3:1     0     40 25-31 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 1 cage1 0:3:2     0 1:3:2     0     40 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 2 cage2 0:6:1     0 1:6:1     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 3 cage3 0:6:2     0 1:6:2     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 4 cage4 0:6:3     0 1:6:3     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a 
 5 cage5 0:6:4     0 1:6:4     0     36 25-30 2.64 2.64 DC4   n/a

-----------Cage detail info for cage0 ---------

Position: ---

Fibre Channel Info PortA0 PortB0 PortA1 PortB1
        Link_Speed  4Gbps     --     --  4Gbps

-----------Cage detail info for cage1 ---------

Position: ---

Fibre Channel Info PortA0 PortB0 PortA1 PortB1
        Link_Speed  4Gbps     --     --  4Gbps
......

Correct

[jack]

Thank you very much!