Question

DS 3400 IBM storage

Asked by: Diskal

hello all,
i have a ds3400
inside got 12 X 300 GB HD
i need to configure it to work in raid 5 with 3TB capacity

do any one knows why in the calculate i get 3TB but when i kclick nect to builfd the array he is allocating 2035 GB ?

thank you in advance.

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Asked On
2009-09-03 at 09:32:44ID24705170
Tags

IBM

,

Storage

Topics

Storage Technology

,

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: rindiPosted on 2009-09-03 at 23:27:54ID: 25257180

You are using an MBR partition layout, and that is limited in size to 2 TB. The newer layout would be to use GPT which supports over 2 TB, but your Raid controller would have to support this. Check with IBM if your controller supports this or can be made to support this (possibly with a firmware upgrade). If not, you'll have to built 2 separate arrays:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-09-04 at 01:20:15ID: 25257608

Is GPT support done on RAID controller level? I thought it is done in Windows as MBR and GPT partitioning is Windows authority.
You cannot use 3TB drive converted to GPT and have Windows installed on it.
If the configuration is used for data storage purpose only then copy out data from all partitions, delete partitions and then right click on disk in Windows Disk Management - convert to GPT.
But this is only if you do not have OS installed on this RAID configuration.

 

by: dlethePosted on 2009-09-14 at 23:32:16ID: 25332247

The RAID firmware has a 2.1TB max logical disk size limit.  This is a firmware constraint due to the fact that the SCSI command-set doesn't support 10-byte SCSI commands.  (There are 4 bytes for the block number, so the highest block number you can address is FFFFFFFF, which roughly translates to 2100GB.    Adding another 300GB disk would put you over.

Nothing you can do on software side. It is a firmware limitation in the controller.

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-09-15 at 00:21:18ID: 25332499

Is this limit of specific RAID controller? Or are you speaking about all RAID controllers?

 

by: dlethePosted on 2009-09-15 at 00:35:49ID: 25332588

This specific controller has the limit, but a large number of RAID controllers have the 2.1TB limit.  

The only way around the 2.1TB limit is to add support for the SCSI(16) Byte command set, and do major work to the firmware.   It is pretty much a rewrite, not just a recompile, and many of the CPUs that RAID firmware was built on use 32-bit integers instead of 64-bit integers.  Many RAID hardware manufacturers came out with new families based on 64-bit CPUs and new APIs.  (That is another thing, the APIs that the manufacturers used to build configurators and management software needed major rework.  (I have over 10 years writing RAID configurators, for multiple vendors, so speak from experience here).  

I could tell you horror stories when the 146 GB disks came out and many RAID engines died and/or destroyed data in new and interesting ways because this was the first time you could put 16x146 GB disks and get over 2.1 TB.   Now all the RAID engines properly handle the 2.1TB limit, without destroying data, but it is still unfortunate that one can bust out of the 2.1 limit with 2 disk drives.

 

by: DiskalPosted on 2009-09-15 at 21:41:54ID: 31624524

Talked to IBM , a firmware update solved the problem, thank you all.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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