Samsung SSD vs HPE SAS drives in HP DL380p Gen8 Server?

[sideways14a]

Ohh this was the second raid card, it seems to be ok - but i have some more playing around to do before i would call it anything else.
If it plays ball i might get another 1 or 2 to do the biz with external arrays.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fujitsu-...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Using a bundle of these sas to sata connectors at the mo - seem ok - again when i get back onto this project i will prob get some more
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1m-SAS-3...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

[lumencreative]

Hp D2600/D2700 disk shelf depending on whether you want 2.5" or 3.5" drives, combined with a P421 external sas smart array card (and a required cable)

Man those D2700’s are incredibly good value, however, and I think a disk shelf would be way off but when I start to look, would it be worth going for something non-hp for a disk shelf (like the netapp) ones so you’re not tied to HPE drives?

 

[Vince]

Man those D2700’s are incredibly good value, however, and I think a disk shelf would be way off but when I start to look, would it be worth going for something non-hp for a disk shelf (like the netapp) ones so you’re not tied to HPE drives?

Both the 2600 and 2700 can also be used if you move forward to a larger infrastructure in terms of hp gear. They are the same shelves used in the eva and I believe they can also be used in later storage solutions from HP.

I love my old EVA but that's next to be replaced anyway those shelves are awesome, I can literally hot add shelves one controller at a time without downtime:



Also it's sensible to be tied to a vendor for most business applications where money comes second to uptime, performance and data retention. The disks are like they are because the EVA for example doesn't use traditional "raid" configurations for its disk groups, instead it uses a custom block algorithm which is mind blowingly complicated (feel free to look it up), anyway im digressing but effectively what it allows is greater resilience in the array if (when) you suffer multiple concurrent disk failures providing your not crazily provisioned. It saved my ass last year when we had two drives go down in a day followed by another one later that evening in the same disk group. basically providing the disks were not neighbouring disks we could have suffered even more up to perhaps 3 disks per shelf before we would be entering the world of data loss.

I have 4 hot spares sitting on the shelf, 4 hour turnarounds on parts plus 24/7 support and really it adds little to the TCO but is convenient. Who really wants to be searching for disks?

 

[Armageus]

Ohh this was the second raid card, it seems to be ok - but i have some more playing around to do before i would call it anything else.
If it plays ball i might get another 1 or 2 to do the biz with external arrays.

Using a bundle of these sas to sata connectors at the mo - seem ok - again when i get back onto this project i will prob get some more

Not sure the relevance of that SAS breakout cable or even the controller - HP Smartarray imo are leagues ahead of the old LSI based cards.

Man those D2700’s are incredibly good value, however, and I think a disk shelf would be way off but when I start to look, would it be worth going for something non-hp for a disk shelf (like the netapp) ones so you’re not tied to HPE drives?

You can use Non-HPE Drives in a D2600 or D2700 - currently I have a DL360 G7 hooked up to 4xD2600 3.5" shelves, half of the drives are HPE 4TB Drives, but the other half are a mix of old CCTV spec SATA 3TB drives (e.g. WD Purple), and we've just started upgrading to some Seagate Skyhawk 10TB CCTV drives.

 

[Vince]

Not sure the relevance of that SAS breakout cable or even the controller - HP Smartarray imo are leagues ahead of the old LSI based cards.



You can use Non-HPE Drives in a D2600 or D2700 - currently I have a DL360 G7 hooked up to 4xD2600 3.5" shelves, half of the drives are HPE 4TB Drives, but the other half are a mix of old CCTV spec SATA 3TB drives (e.g. WD Purple), and we've just started upgrading to some Seagate Skyhawk 10TB CCTV drives.

In my 2600/2700's you can't I can't even use certain HP disks and a while back they were sending us disks that were just straight up not being recognised or were getting recognised but thrown out as not compatible. That is EVA specific though but may go some way to explaining where peoples perception gets skewed. Same enclosure but in my application can only use 600gb hp sas drives with certain firmware.

 

[sideways14a]

I had loads of problems with the HP controller and disks it didnt like, the backplane also seemed huffy about drives sometimes even if put through the non HP controller.

I just wanted a cheep solution for big storage even using non server parts.

 

[Armageus]

In my 2600/2700's you can't I can't even use certain HP disks and a while back they were sending us disks that were just straight up not being recognised or were getting recognised but thrown out as not compatible. That is EVA specific though but may go some way to explaining where peoples perception gets skewed. Same enclosure but in my application can only use 600gb hp sas drives with certain firmware.

Would make sense as I think disks for an EVA require a specific firmware - I've certainly seen different part numbers when looking for standard server drives, only to find out they were for an EVA.

 

[Vince]

Would make sense as I think disks for an EVA require a specific firmware - I've certainly seen different part numbers when looking for standard server drives, only to find out they were for an EVA.

The firmware is something to do with the way the disks are grouped I am sure. You can have disk groups of almost unlimited size, for example my core infrastructure disk group (array) is 48 disks and is considered small for an eva and which although you could potentially do with a raid 10 array you wouldn't really want to as not many controllers will support that number of disks then what if the single array goes?

The eva picks a min or max parity size based on the number of drives so it can effectively shift data around in order to change the amount of parity delivered to the array. I hope that makes sense. For anybody interested the controller for an eva is a HSV340.

 

[lumencreative]

Have just come across some new HPE 900GB 10k SAS drives with caddies for £70 each so think I’m going to jump on those instead of the 600GB ones. At least that will give me about 3TB of useable space in RAID10. How does that sound?
I’ve also got my eye on a D2700 full of 600GB drives which I could use as a backup pool, but want to know how old the drives are first.

 

[Armageus]

Have just come across some new HPE 900GB 10k SAS drives with caddies for £70 each so think I’m going to jump on those instead of the 600GB ones. At least that will give me about 3TB of useable space in RAID10. How does that sound?
I’ve also got my eye on a D2700 full of 600GB drives which I could use as a backup pool, but want to know how old the drives are first.

At £70 each they aren't new - I think I've found the ones you are on about and they are listed as "clean system pulls". I'd still go for them - you can essentially buy 4 for the price of one new one (and this is what we do at work). Ideally you'd have a hotspare, and then a hard drive failure is merely a mild inconvenience.

 

[lumencreative]

At £70 each they aren't new - I think I've found the ones you are on about and they are listed as "clean system pulls". I'd still go for them - you can essentially buy 4 for the price of one new one (and this is what we do at work). Ideally you'd have a hotspare, and then a hard drive failure is merely a mild inconvenience.

Ah yes it does say clean system pull however they also list them as being ‘new’ but either way I think at £70 they’re a good buy.

 

[Vince]

Ah yes it does say clean system pull however they also list them as being ‘new’ but either way I think at £70 they’re a good buy.

I recon 900gb drives for £70 seems a good deal tbh.

 

[lumencreative]

I recon 900gb drives for £70 seems a good deal tbh.

Just bought 4 of them and will buy another 4 in a couple of weeks (not setting the server up until the end of Jan so will still build the raid array with all 8 disks). Will then order another 4 to keep as spares

Thanks for all the advise.

 

[lumencreative]

Have received the 4 x HPE drives I ordered today and I just wanted some opinions on how old is too old for a used enterprise drive?

To recap, the drives were listed as ‘new’ but the description stated ‘clean system pulls’. The drives delivered have a manufacture date of 2014, so not sure whether that’s reasonable.

 

[Vince]

Have received the 4 x HPE drives I ordered today and I just wanted some opinions on how old is too old for a used enterprise drive?

To recap, the drives were listed as ‘new’ but the description stated ‘clean system pulls’. The drives delivered have a manufacture date of 2014, so not sure whether that’s reasonable.

They are likely refurbs and I have a supplier that if I can't get drives from HP ill go to them and they sort me refurbs. Rarely have issues and ive seen disks as old as 2012. Honestly I wouldn't worry about the date on the disks as there are so many companies that refurb them imo they will be fine.

Also you are lucky they have dates at all - Just looking at a 146gb pull and can't even see a date on it. Also they are rated for silly amounts of time, I've seen drives with 100's of thousands of hours on the spindal be fine whereas brand new ones fail the next day.

 

[lumencreative]

They are likely refurbs and I have a supplier that if I can't get drives from HP ill go to them and they sort me refurbs. Rarely have issues and ive seen disks as old as 2012. Honestly I wouldn't worry about the date on the disks as there are so many companies that refurb them imo they will be fine.

Also you are lucky they have dates at all - Just looking at a 146gb pull and can't even see a date on it. Also they are rated for silly amounts of time, I've seen drives with 100's of thousands of hours on the spindal be fine whereas brand new ones fail the next day.

Thanks that has reassured me, I just wanted to be sure before ordering more

 

[lumencreative]

Sorry to drag this thread up again but after the discussions that went on on this thread, I ended up grabbing 2 x HP D2600’s off fleabay for £90 each. I bought 24 x used HP caddies for £46 and ordered 13 x used HP Enterprise 2TB SAS drives for £360.

The drives I ordered were HP branded Seagate ES.3’s which obviously have HP firmware on the, however, despite the description and image on the ad showing HP Enterprise drives, the seller actually sent me Seagate branded ES.3’s. I have contacted the seller and yet to hear back but I just wondered if I’m being unreasonable in asking for either a refund or the HP branded drives I ordered, seeing as they are essentially the same drive but with different firmware.

 

[Vince]

Sorry to drag this thread up again but after the discussions that went on on this thread, I ended up grabbing 2 x HP D2600’s off fleabay for £90 each. I bought 24 x used HP caddies for £46 and ordered 13 x used HP Enterprise 2TB SAS drives for £360.

The drives I ordered were HP branded Seagate ES.3’s which obviously have HP firmware on the, however, despite the description and image on the ad showing HP Enterprise drives, the seller actually sent me Seagate branded ES.3’s. I have contacted the seller and yet to hear back but I just wondered if I’m being unreasonable in asking for either a refund or the HP branded drives I ordered, seeing as they are essentially the same drive but with different firmware.

At £27 a drive (if they all work) I wouldn't be too unhappy I don't think. I would probably keep them tbh. So long as they spin and hold data then it probably won't matter that much. @Armageus is probably in a better position to answer as my shelves although technically the same are very different.

Ideally I would want HP drives but 2tb dives at £27 each is very cheap so I would be a bit torn.

 

[lumencreative]

At £27 a drive (if they all work) I wouldn't be too unhappy I don't think. I would probably keep them tbh. So long as they spin and hold data then it probably won't matter that much. @Armageus is probably in a better position to answer as my shelves although technically the same are very different.

Ideally I would want HP drives but 2tb dives at £27 each is very cheap so I would be a bit torn.

That was my initial thought too but the company I bought them off sell tonnes of refurbished server hardware and actually have other listings advertising the HP branded drives at the same price (they actually sell a lot of drives in batches of 10 or more for around the same price per drive), and they have 100% positive feedback.

I did read that the D2600 will take the Seagate drives fine but I really wanted to keep everything HP. Maybe I’m just being petty.

 

[Armageus]

What controller are you using to connect the D2600?

If it's not a HP Smart Array then no issue with them not being HP Drives.

If it is a Smart Array, then I personally would try and get them replaced just out of principle (i.e. they aren't as described/advertised), but in the worst case they will likely still work fine.