SUMMARY: SUN Enterprise 450 hard disks

From: Jose Carlos Perez Ramilo (jramilo@dalphimetal.com)
Date: Mon Mar 01 1999 - 09:53:24 CST


Here is the summary of my question (below):

Thanks to:

Richard Goerwitz
Thomas Vincent
Allan J. SIMEONE
Tom Vayda
Chad Price
David B. Harrington
Matthew J. Rock
Al Hopper
John D. Groenveld

The answers were:

1 - Almost all of them told me it is absolutely safe to use non SUN disks.
They must have:
    - Single-ended SCA style interface
    - Low profile ( 1" high ) drives (this is key)
    - The Sun little bracket mounting thing, which is (or must be) available
from the same manufacturer
        as the disk

2 - Some of them told me that is not safe to mix in the same RAID device
different disks with
    different geometries. So I need to buy exactly the same part number and
from the same
    manufacturer (Seagate, IBM, etc), and format the in exactly the same
way.
    If we mix disks, the size and performance of the total device will be
limited by the size
    and performance of the smallest/slowest disk

3- Some of them told me they don't recommend buying non-SUN disks for a
critical server like
    this one. This has something to see with the timings and so on (looks
obscure ...). I think this is
    not a realistic position, since SUN disks are manufactured by IBM and
Seagate and they have
    the same part number as the ones I use in my NT servers.

I have decided, looking at the answers, to buy my new six disks from SUN, (I
need to mix them
with the other nine I have in a mirror device).

Also, I promise to use non-SUN disks in my next disk array, all from the
same manufacturer, and
maybe from Seagate.

Thank you very much for your invaluable help

Jose Carlos Perez Ramilo
Informatica Industrial
Dalphi Metal Espaņa
jramilo@dalphimetal.com

>Hello all:
>
>I am in doubt.
>
>I am in the process of buying 6 new 9.2Gb hard disk drives to add to the 9
>actual 9.2 Gb disks
>drives original from SUN in my Ultra Enterprise 450 server.
>
>I am planning to create a mirror device with all these disks and Disktool.
>
>My problem is that this upgrade costs about $10.000 if I buy original SUN
>material, but I am worried
>about buying other manufacturer material, mainly due to the packaging of
the
>disks to fit
>into the E450, and also to possible problems when creating the mirror with
>SUN disks.
>
>Have any of you any clue?
>Can I use other manufacturer disks (cheaper)??
>No problem with different geometry disks when mirroring?
>
>Thanks a lot. I will summarize.
>
>Jose Carlos Perez Ramilo
>Informatica Industrial
>Dalphi Metal Espaņa
>jramilo@dalphimetal.com
>



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