Beginners guide on how to setup HP MSA 2312sa Storage array

Posted by on Apr 2, 2010 in Guides, Tools10 comments

I recently setup a HP MSA 2300 series storage array. It was the SAS model with 4 enclosure trays. I have to admit that I have not setup one of these with Fiber or iSCSI but they are very similar other than the assign to host part. In the setup guide I cover how to configure the management interfaces, create Vdisks, create volumes and then assign them to hosts. It covers different ways to setup your hot spare drives.

After reading this short document you will be able to get that new MSA array up and running quickly. I set my array up to talk to a small 3 node vSphere cluster but the setup would be the same if you were using for a Windows cluster or most other uses.

You can download the PDF of the document How to Setup MSA array here.

Update 1-10-2011

I saw that someone else has created a Best practices document for the P2000 series. It’s not an official document but worth a look for new users. Have a look here.

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (170)

Related Posts

  • Fabian

    Hi, I've already done this config but what I don't know is how to make it accessible from the network. How can I save data on the volume created and mapped to the host.

  • http://www.virtualizetips.com/ BrianS

    Hello,
    Could you explain in more detail what you have done already? What type of connection are you using and have you assigned the volumes to the host?

  • http://www.virtualizetips.com/ BrianS

    Hello,
    Could you explain in more detail what you have done already? What type of connection are you using and have you assigned the volumes to the host?

  • Pingback: I added more disks to HP MSA 2300 series storage today | Virtualization Tips

  • Harman Sidhu

    Hi I am havin gproblems configuring the MSA to create a RAIDGroup (RAID 1) with 4 disks, I am only able to select 2 disks the other two are appearing as spares. Can you please help?

  • http://www.virtualizetips.com/ BrianS

    Hello,
    Raid1 is disk mirroring so it's only 2 disks that you configure. If you want more than 2 disks in a volume you must choose Raid 5 or 10 might be options for you.

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/andrewisett Andrew

    Thanks for the write-up. It’s too bad you can’t easily find this info on HP’s own website.

  • http://twitter.com/recklessop Justin Paul

    Thanks for mentioning my post. I havent gotten to work with the SAS model so I will be linking to your article as well!

    Thanks again,
    Justin
    http://jpaul.me

  • Pingback: Running vSphere 4 on HP P2000 | Justin's IT Blog

  • http://profiles.google.com/felipesg Felipe Sanchez

    Hi, Great articles..!!!
    I was searching for something similiar but not success yey.
    I Have an HP MSA500 connected via SCSI to a Windows 2003 standard server.
    I my server goes down, can I connect and reconfigure the RAIDS in another server without danger for all the data?

    Thank you

    • http://www.virtualizetips.com/ BrianS

      I think your asking if you can assign your vDisks to another Windows server if the original one crashes.
      In theory yes you can, but must be sure to only allow one Windows server to talk to the vDisks at a time to prevent corruption. But I would make sure you have good backups or test on non production servers first.

  • Michael

    Excellent article, do you have any advice for multipathing on with ESX, should we configure the paths to use round robin as you do with the FC and iSCSI controllers?