A customer asked me if it was possible to use non-hp drives in an HP MSA20 as they costed a lot less than HPs own drives. I honestly said that it would require a POF. The customer accepted the initial expense of single 1TB SATA drive. I fired up hpacucli to figure out what was up and down on this
=> ctrl ch="mirror" show config detail .... .... physicaldrive 1:1 Box: 1 Bay: 1 Status: OK Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SATA Size: 1000.2 GB Firmware Revision: HPG1 Serial Number: 9QJ2B4GD Model: HPÂ GB1000EAFJL SATA NCQ Capable: False
As HP does not make harddrives, but uses OEM drives with custom firmware I had to figure out what types of drives was in there. The easiest solution would be to shut the box down and pull out a drive to inspect. Having dealt with HP quite a lot, I know that they also remark the drives, so I would probably not be able to see what types of drives was in there, leaving me with guessing if I choose to go that route.
Instead I opted for figuring out what type of drive it was likely to be based on the firmware. I googled a bit and found that the MSA20 could support up to 1TB disks. A bit more googling yielded this advisory from HP about upgrading firmware on Seagate drives to HPG6. Based on the age of the MSA20 in question, the age of the 1TB HP disks we already had in them, I decided it was most likely to be Baracuda 7200.11 drives that HP utilized for this and thus we ordered one of those.
Drive arrived. We put it in. Rescanned and lo and behold:
physicaldrive 1:6 Box: 1 Bay: 6 Status: OK Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SATA Size: 1000.2 GB Firmware Revision: CC38 Serial Number:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 9VP4D0ZA Model: Seagate ST31000528AS SATA NCQ Capable: False
A non-HP drive working. We have now placed an order for 19 x 1TB Seagate drives.
Your millage may wary if you try this. It is also worth mentioning that it would be an option to test non-seagate disks and/or bigger disks. Beware of the heat and power requirements though! HP themselves only sells the MSA20 with upto 1TB disks.
Finally for the record, it should be state that this was on an MSA20 with this firmware level:
MSA20 in mirror Bus Interface: SCSI Serial Number: PAAAC0PMQTR7V0 Chassis Serial Number: E01RMLJ17M Chassis Name: mirror RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Enabled Controller Status: OK Chassis Slot: 2 Hardware Revision: Rev A Firmware Version: 2.08 Rebuild Priority: Medium Expand Priority: Medium Surface Scan Delay: 3 secs Cache Board Present: True Cache Status: OK Accelerator Ratio: 50% Read / 50% Write Drive Write Cache: Disabled Read Cache Size: 56 MB Write Cache Size: 56 MB Total Cache Size: 112 MB Chassis Slot 2 Battery Info Battery Pack Count: 2 Battery Status: OK Host Bus Adapter Slot: Slot Unknown Host Bus Adapter Port: 1 SATA NCQ Supported: False