Well today I finally got to break the seal on our new HP MSA 2312sa Storage. Its a lower end SAN configuration that uses SAS drives and controllers. It is supported in vSphere and ESX 3.5 Update 3 and up. The MSA line of storage is the lower end offering from HP and cost was a big reason why the client choose this configuration.
The MSA 2312sa was configured with 4 chassis’s and has redundant controllers. We also have dual port SAS HBA’s in the ESX hosts. Each of the chassis can hold 20 disks, which are available in 450 gb up to 1 tb each at the moment. The 2 tb disks are expect by summer of 2010. The MSA offers a variety of RAID options and the ability to tie a hot spare disk to a specific vDisk or operate as a global spare for all vDisks.
The setup and management of the MSA series is done from a web based console. The console looks a lot like the server iLo screens but on steriods. You can create you vDisks and then cut them into LUN/Volumes that you can then present to your hosts. The console offers both list views and picture options. The picture option shows you what the front or back of the configuration would look like including which lights would be lit at the time.
So far I am pretty impressed on the ease of use for a lower end piece of storage gear. I will write a new blog post on how well it performs once I start loading on some VM’s.
About Brian
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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