[Linux-cluster] HP msa20 and rhcs?

[Kovacs, Corey J.]

The MSA20 is only a disk shelf. You'd need to have it conneted to a raid
controller
which is built into the DL360 and above, or simply access the individual
drives 
themselves. It does allow multi-initiator connections, but I think it's more
along 
the lines of having multiple paths to an MSA500 which is a two node non-fibre
SAN
if it can even be considered a SAN since no fibre is involved. It's not more
than
a high end external storage device.



Corey

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-cluster-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:linux-cluster-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Lon Hohberger
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 10:11 AM
To: omer at faruk.net; linux clustering
Subject: Re: [Linux-cluster] HP msa20 and rhcs?

On Mon, 2006-05-01 at 22:11 +0300, Omer Faruk Sen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I need a cheap shared storage and wanted to know if anyone in this 
> list used HP MSA20  (shared SCSI) on rhcs? I want to setup a 2 node 
> cluster with shared storage and cheapest HP shared storage seems to be
MSA20..

I've never used one; maybe someone else has.

General rules of thumb when using SCSI shared storage:

* If it requires a specific controller to make the RAID work, it probably is
not a good bet, regardless of what the marketing literature would have you
believe.

* If it works with a plain-jane SCSI (ex- an Adaptec 2940U2W) card and still
has some way of accessing the array management tools (ex: a serial
port) for configuring/presenting the LUNs, it should generally "just work".

There are undoubtedly exceptions to these rules.  I'm not at all familiar
with the MSA20.

I do, however, have a MSA500 which has been working fine.  The MSA500 needs
CCISS controllers to talk to the on-board MSA controller and configure the
LUNs during bootup.  After that, the CCISS controllers act as "dumb" SCSI
cards when talking to the MSA500, or so it seems.  It's been working fine in
a 2-node failover cluster for a couple of years, but I have not tried it with
GFS.

Whether that means the MSA20 will work... I do not know.  It might ;)

-- Lon

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