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updates: from the below answers from "Chopper3", its possible to connect to HP MDS600 JBOD using HP DL server with a RAID controller card. Multiple servers can connect to MDS600 array; create volumes, and distribute those volumes over to others as NFS. MDS600 has two drawers of disks.

the new question is how to tune this for best performance? are there any advantages of moving over to 6Gbps SAS, 10GB ethernet?

although this question is posted by me here:

hardware for bulding unified storage solution using nexentastor had few trailing questions and wanted to consolidate my understanding:

there is a new software: apart from Nexenta, there is a new Gluster Storage platform. Unlike Nexenta this needs hardware RAID, but does not seem to suffer from any perf issues.

hardware: "Chopper" suggested HP DL370 + MDS600 array. Since MDS600 is just a JBOD enclosure, could this be provisioned using DL370+OS (Nexenta or Gluster) with SAS (external) connectivity. If TRUE are there any perf downsides of using only 1 out of 4 ports on MDS600.

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  • Did you build anything?
    – ewwhite
    Sep 23, 2012 at 14:26

1 Answer 1

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Although the MDS600 is just a disk enclosure it's worth you knowing that the P212 and P411 controllers that are compatible with this box only support 64 logicial drives each - meaning you'd need two controllers to address all 70 disks in one enclosure. Of course this would mean you'd have twice the overall bandwidth available to you.

As for the physical ports, each port carries each of the four 3Gbps SAS channels.

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  • looking for connecting the MDS600 directly to proliant DL servers with controller P411 on the server. Possibility of connecting multiple proliant servers each with external controller? Also can each of the connected DL servers serve the storage over IP (iSCSI)? thanks
    – JMS77
    Sep 24, 2010 at 4:23
  • Yes the 411 works fine but only 64 logical volumes per card, yes multiple machines can connect (there are 4 ports), but there cannot be any dusk volume sharing ok. Once one pc has the volume mounted then they can share it's space/files via any method you like including iSCSI.
    – Chopper3
    Sep 24, 2010 at 7:36
  • so essentially it means servers can connect to storage box, spawn logical volumes and then distribute over IP if they want to?
    – JMS77
    Sep 24, 2010 at 13:38
  • yes it does, that's correct
    – Chopper3
    Sep 24, 2010 at 13:46
  • hi thanks, have you had any chance to work with Gluster storage software, it claims revolutionary design and perf. I posted a question here but no answers! i could post a new question if you want me to.
    – JMS77
    Sep 24, 2010 at 14:01

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