Hmmm... that's interesting. I don't want to be foolhardy here, but I just checked the power requirements for the Seagate ST39173W (9GB Barracuda) drives and the ST15150W (4GB Barracuda) drives that are in the filer's shelf now.
ST39173W ST15150W 12V startup 1.7 amps 2.18 12V typical 0.5 0.83 5V startup 1.2 amps 1.0 5V typical 0.75 0.75
It appears to me that, except for the 5V startup, the 9GB drives require _less_ power than the 4GB drives. Is the 5V startup the limiting factor? Can the power supply not deliver 1.2 amps at 5V to six drives? Is startup power the power required to "spin up" the disks? In that case, isn't that power only delivered once at boot time? Do the disks ever spin down in an active system?
I really don't mean to be confrontational. We're just desperate to get some more life out of our F210 (we bought it new just two years ago).
Jason Priebe WRAL OnLine http://www.wral-tv.com/
-----Original Message----- From: Bulfer, David [mailto:david.bulfer@netapp.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 5:30 PM To: 'Priebe, Jason'; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Some fun things not to try at home
Please be careful. I do not believe that your StorageWorks shelf has enough power for 9G drives. Buying a new supply from Compaq would not solve the problem either. Your results could be quite unhappy.
David Bulfer Director of Platform Engineering Network Appliance, Inc.
-----Original Message----- From: Priebe, Jason [mailto:priebe@wral-tv.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 1:22 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Some fun things not to try at home
-----Original Message----- From: Bruce Sterling Woodcock [mailto:sirbruce@ix.netcom.com] If you find out something useful in your filer experience, plesae pass it along, even
if it's of
the "I didn't read the manual, so I did this and it
crashed" variety.
While we're airing dirty laundry -- a couple of months ago, I mentioned to the list that we wanted to try to replace our F210's 4GB SCSI disks with 9GB disks (full shelf, no more shelves available from NetApp).
I replaced two of the 4GB disks with 9GB ones, and all was well (of course, the filer only used 4 of the 9GB, but we figured we'd dump to tape, rebuild the file system, then restore once all the drives were in place).
So I'm opening the 3rd disk carrier, removing the flex circuit from the disk drive (has anyone else ever tried to do this? How the #$%! do you do it?) by prying with a screwdriver, and the screwdriver goes right through the circuit. D'oh!
I did find that I was able to call Compaq and order a new circuit (only $96 for that tiny little piece!). Still waiting on delivery, though. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish I'd known you could still order these parts -- I could have built a couple of my own carriers and had them ready to go into the filer instead of failing a drive, disassembling the carrier, reassembling the carrier, and reinstalling.
Jason Priebe WRAL OnLine http://www.wral-tv.com/
On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Priebe, Jason wrote:
It appears to me that, except for the 5V startup, the 9GB drives require _less_ power than the 4GB drives.
It does look like it from the specs, except for tthe 5V startup.
Can the power supply not deliver 1.2 amps at 5V to six drives?
Are you implying that you'd rather use 6 drives per shelf rather than 7? This would still put you over if the disks started up at the same time. 6 * 1.2 = 7.2 whereas 7 * 1.0 =, well, 7.0. OTOH I'm sure that the engineers put a bit more juice into the shelf than required. Also, see below.
Is startup power the power required to "spin up" the disks? In that case, isn't that power only delivered once at boot time?
In addition to this, if I remember correctly, the filer spins up disks sequentially, so there shouldn't be more than one disk drawing startup power at any one time.
Do the disks ever spin down in an active system?
I think they do when you do a disk swap.
Tom
It appears to me that, except for the 5V startup, the 9GB drives require _less_ power than the 4GB drives. Is the 5V startup the limiting factor? Can the power supply not deliver 1.2 amps at 5V to six drives? Is startup power the power required to "spin up" the disks? In that case, isn't that power only delivered once at boot time? Do the disks ever spin down in an active system?
I can't explain why the stated power requirements seem to be compatible; I only know what was learned with actual experience and testing. The spin-up shouldn't be an issue since, as someone else pointed out, filers spin the disks up more or less sequentially. But in any case, when the 9GB drives are active, the draw on the power will pull the write line of the drives down to unacceptable levels. This didn't happen with the 4GB drives.
I really don't mean to be confrontational. We're just desperate to get some more life out of our F210 (we bought it new just two years ago).
When you bought it 2 years ago, due dilligence told you it would not expand beyond a certain size without investing in a new system, right? You chose to save money then and pay for it later. Well, now it's later.
About the only other advice I could offer is if you're going to try to use the drives, make sure you are doing regular backups and only use like 4 drives per shelf. Have additional 9GB drives available as spares since the failure rate will probably be higher. This will get you like 30% more storage on your F210 than you have now.
Bruce
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Bruce Sterling Woodcock -
Priebe, Jason -
tkaczma＠gryf.net