RE: 6618 drives for model 270

From: Larry Bolhuis

From a power and cooling perspective this should work fine. I probably
would put 'blanks' in the open slots so the air going through passes
across the drives rather than down the empty holes though. I have never
seen a Seagate 15K drive come for a System i. Every one has been the IBM
variety.

Okay, I think I'm going to roll the dice and go with five drives. I'll see
if I can rig up a blank for the hole; I only have five drives in there now,
so I might already have a blank. My only question now is whether to
configure four in the RAID set and have a fifth live spare for "pseudo hot
swap" or to go with five live drives.

By the way, my rationale (naive though it may be) is that it's easier and
quicker to simply swap an already installed live drive into the RAID set to
replace a failed drive than it is to physically replace the failed drive.
With the drive already installed, I "just" add it to the RAID set and I can
replace the failed drive later when I can schedule down time. Not being
much of an expert at this, I don't know whether the downtimes for the two
actions are enough different to warrant the trouble.

The biggest feat is that the BCC drives must not identify themselves as
any 15K drive or the 270 will reject them. If they report as FC #4318s
then they will work and the power draw should be OK.

Yeah, if the 270 doesn't accept them, then this whole discussion is moot and
I go with five 10K drives and a hot swap.

Joe