Re: Upgrading storage on the BCS

Hmm, I would have gone the FC route for cheap used storages. I have next to
zero experience with the BC S integrated storages. I'm curious as to how
the IBM i sees those 300Gb drives, because they should be 281Gb ones
(formatted to 522 bytes x sector), maybe the SAS module creates a volume
for each and handles the emulation? or is it the IVM that does that?
Now, if you are talking about adding generic SAS drives for the X blades,
then i can tell you they work without problem. RS6000/pSeries/xSeries have
no qualms about generic hardware, in fact i have a p6 machine running dual
VIOS, and those vios live in xseries disks not pseries...


On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Pete Helgren <pete@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I can't believe that my Bladecenter is 6 years old and the JS12 is of
equal age but since I purchased it way back when I have added some
xServer blades and I need to add some storage and reconfigure it, so I
am looking for advice/caveats in the process.

The original chassis had (and still has) a single SAS Connectivity
module (SAS Switch) which is non-RAID capable (it's part # 39Y9192). I
also have one storage module (it's part # 44T1405) which has 6 - 146GB
15K SAS drives. For reasons I cannot remember, when I installed the
JS12 blade and configured storage, I used the "Configuration store 9"
option which is "Predefined Config 05" which allocates the 6 drives to
blade 1. When I look at the physical volumes in the IVM, I have the
two internal drives of the JS12 blade allocated to VIOS. Then I have 4
of the 146GB drives allocated to one of my IBM i partitions (main) and
then I have a single drive allocated to a second IBM i partition
(test/scratch) and then the remaining drive allocated to a Linux
partition. I have 4 other blades (x Blades) and all of them run Windows
and use just the internal drives (mirrored) for storage.

With that background, my plan is to add:
1) SAS RAID connectivity module (43W3630)
1) SAS Storage module (another 44T1405)
6) 300GB 15K SAS drives

I am going the eBay route for sourcing this stuff (the SAS RAID
controllers seem pretty pricey when new - used I can find them at about
$500).

So here are the questions:
1) Can the new SAS RAID module peacefully coexist with the other SAS
Module (non-RAID) in the chassis?
2) Will it be possible to reconfigure the storage zoning without losing
data? e.g. I think the current config allocates all 12 drives in both
storage modules (when I get them) to blade 1 so I obviously want to
allocate just 6 drives to blade 1 and then make the new storage
available to the other x Blades.
3) Is the BCS as cranky about non-IBM HW as an IBM i would be? In other
words: Can I buy 300GB 15K drives that are not IBM drives and still
expect them to work with the storage modules and the SAS RAID module?

Don't know if anyone has done this on this list. I know there are a
couple of you folks with IBM i on a blade. Curious as to what you would
think.

--
Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java

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