[SunRescue] RSM2000 disk upgrade advice wanted

[Jonathan Katz]

Paul asked:
> We have a problem, in that we wish to upgrade a SUN RSM2000 RAID cabinet
> which currently has 7 x 5 x 9 Gb drives in it. Response from Sun - never
> tested with drives bigger than 9Gb, throw it away and start again....

I have one of these beasties at home, but only w/ 4GB drives. I wonder
what kind (or even if) they'll let you trade it in against a shiny new
(remanufactured) A3500? Have any plans for the old disks? *wink*
 
> Anyone out there using larger drives in an RSM2000? eg 18, 27, 36 or (gulp)
> 72 Gb drives? It currently takes half height Seagate and Fujitsu 9 Gb SCSI
> drives but will take the 1/3 height equiv.

I think you should be able to pull it off. Although it isn't tested and
sure as hell won't be supported the RSM2000 takes the "same"** firmware as
an A3500-- the A3500 is the sucessor to the A3000 which uses D1000s instead
of RSM trays for the disks. A3500s ship with D1000s with big (18GB) drives.

You're definately in uncharted waters here, but if you're budgeting for 35
72GB drives you may as well plonk down the cash for seven drives and just
try for one tray to see if that works. Worst-case scenario is that you can
just return the drives to the place of purchase, right? But if you just go
with that one tray to test the big drives make sure to disconnect the
other trays as that will definately break things since the backup copy of
the dacstore*** will be read by the array and the array will barf. Make
sure ONLY the one tray with the new drives in it is what's plugged in for
your test.

Are you planning to migrate the data from the old disks to new disks? There
are other things you'll need to worry about if you do that, too.

** this is open for debate as I flashed my RSM2000 w/ the "wrong" firmware,
but that was because I was dumb and flashed it the wrong way, not with the
wrong type of firmware. The other trick is the A3500 uses slightly different
device drivers in the firmware because the SCSI and RAID chips in the two
units are different. Note that when you install RM6.22 there is only
one directory filled with firmware for all hardware-RAID based units.

*** dacstores are like Veritas private regions, except they are what's
used by Raid Manager 6.22 

Good luck, and let us know how it goes :)

-Jon
--
Jonathan Katz
e-mail: jon at jonworld.com 
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