REVIEW - HP StorageWorks MSA70 JBOD 25 x 2.5" Drives

Thought I would do a quick review of these for people who rarely get to see enterprise stoarge hardware. (also not much info on interweb about them)

So here we have the HP StorageWorks MSA70
Capacity = 25 x 2.5inch SAS / SATA Drives in a 2RU height case
3Gbs Max not 6Gbs I believe (they are getting on a bit now circa 2009)
SFF-8088 Connections
7-segment display board
Blue UID leds front and rear
Dual Hotswap fans
Dual Hotswap PSU's
Single or Dual Port (add an extra I/O Module) ... Tho there is some GOTCHA's to be wear of
Completely tool less serviceability

For the size and capacity, and being Rack Mount... they are not too back on the noise front. Sound like jets when first started up... but the fans settle down after about 20secs to a "I can live with the noise" level.

Ok on with the photo show of the actual hardware

Then I will pull it all down and rebuild it step by step so you get to see the ease of serviceability and how it all goes together in a lego like fashion

Overall photo first.


Drive Caddies left and Drive Blanks right (which must be inserted to keep the proper airflow, if no drive is used in a bay)



Ok lets strip this baby completely empty, apart from the drive blanks / drives in the bays...

Empty chassis looking from the rear of chassis, that is
No Backplane, No Midplane, No Riser, No I/O Modules, No Fans, No PSU's


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Notice how there is flaps to block the airflow and direct it in the right places, when you remove the I/O Modules... pretty clever idea

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Empty View from the front


OK so now lets put the jigsaw all back together
First we have to install the Hotswap Backplane

Rear View of Backplane


Front (Drive side) view of the Hotswap Backplane


4 Little Thumb screws


Hotswap Backplane Mounted

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Now we move onto the Midplane this connects the Power supplies and Fans and I/O Modules etc to the Hotswap Backplane

Notice the big blue handle, Pull it up to remove the Midplane... lock it back down when re installing.

Also notice the fairly hefty voltage regulators on the right hand side
So we keep a nice power flow to the backplane... and do not cause a dip / surge when inserting or removing a drive... which could knock all the other drives offline.

Handle up


Handle down


So lets fit it back in
Handle up, Midplane and backplane are dissconnected



Push handle down and the midplane is moved forward to join everything up


Little riserboard that goes from the Midplane up to the 7 Segment LED display board

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Now we slide in the 7 Segment LED display board


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Next we have the Hotswap Fan Modules, Each one has 2 fans for redundancy... and there are 2 Modules


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Hotswap Fan Modules Inserted


Next we have the Hotswap Powersupply Modules of which there are two.
Specs are 575W and a decent 47A on the 12V Rail

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Hotswap Powersupply Modules Inserted



Now we move onto the I/O Module/s
Standard MSA70 has 1 x I/O Module and a blanking module
They can be upgraded to Dual I/O Modules for Multipathing - Dual Port SAS Drives ETC


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I/O Module and a Blank Inserted




Dual I/O Inserted


Lid Back on and we are ready to go


Power plugged in and MSA70 in standby mode, Hold the power switch down for 3secs to fire it into life


Quick video here of it firing up (when it gets approved)
http://youtu.be/iSSQeeyl76k

To add another 50 drives quick and easy
Fit a second MSA70 into the rack
And all that needs to be done then is for you to connect 2 x Power cables...
Then connect a SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable from the OUT port of the first MSA70, into the IN Port of the second MSA70 and you are off and going.



Hope you enjoyed

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I need a change of pants.

 

Very interesting, thanks!

What are the two different coloured cable ties on the power connector for? Is it some sort of tagging with them each connected to a different mains source or is it coincidence?

 

Yeah I do them that way to stop confusion... and avoid pulling the wrong one accidentaly






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Very interesting, thanks for posting! HP seem to put a lot of thought into their enclosures in terms of airflow, making use of the available space and serviceability...

 

Nice, makes my battle setting up my NAS look feeble. Great to see the guts.

 

Interesting, some very large pics however.

what does the 7 segment led do?

why does it have such a long pcb, when power switch is ribbon cable?

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does the fan module blow/suck sideways across the IO boards?
I thought they were to cool hard drives?

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The PS & fans have leds, which are off in the 3 second hold power photo.
Do they turn on during errors? Not solid during Ok?

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How do you get alerts (snmp?) regarding failed fan & psu.
I assume that the SAS cable can report drive failures etc.

This is 2009? Is this at your work or home?

 

That displays ( when hooked to a HP Smartarray controller )
Port number connected
Enclosure number

Eg
For say when 2 are connected to the first port on a P800
One would display
P1 E1
Second one would display
P1 E2

All fans ( psu and fan modules ) pull air from front to rear of chassis, I/O modules are actually just long connection to the midplane board where the smarts are located. Eg rather than having the midplane extending all the way to the rear of the chassis or using a SAS extension lead etc.

All off during standby
All green when powered on
Amber if there is a fault etc

You would get alerts thru the smartarray controller's status
Unsure what happens with a plain HBA yet... Guess I can find out tho

At home

Some good manuals on them here
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&lang=en&cc=uk&docIndexId=64902&taskId=101&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3355734

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Very cool!

What is the logic behind having the blank in to *increase* airflow? I would have thought having just a gap where the drive goes would be better? :/

 

Since it's the easiest path the gap would probably rob all of the airflow from other parts?

 

Correct

Next time you turn a tap on
Stick your finger on the water outlet and cover half of it... Does the water on the uncovered half come out faster?

Same principle here with airflow

Block all the empty drive bays and the air flows over the bays with drives in them... And doesn't take the easiest path thru the empty bays.

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Slightly older design now but still shows what the advantages of Enterprise grade Vs. Domestic grade.

I have worked on a few of these and other things including plenty of the G5's not unlike the one seen in the back of the shots.

The biggest drawback these have:
2.5" drives = expensive and capacity limited. Still way to expensive for the average joe looking to pick up a bargain on eBay.



Thanks for your time though Stanza, we will compare racks someday... LOL

 

I think the largest available SAS drives HP offer currently are the 900GB 2.5" 10K RPM drives? mhmm 22.5TB of JBOD

Thanks for the write up. I'm not in a position where I get to touch cool gear much just the tip of the iceberg with HP DL/ML 300 series as regular kit.

Wouldn't happen to have any DL580 g7's to review eh? they are nice kit.

 

Not many cheque books can handle a G7.

 

Yeah 2.5" drives are smallish... but they are FAST and use low power / generate less heat etc.

2.5" 2TB SATA drives are around but rare... 1TB ones are a plenty.

If I want space I can just bang more 2TB drives in more Microserver's
But I don't really have much to store

I am slowly building up stock of 72GB SAS Drives.... As I would like to give these 2 MSA70's a decent run and see what speeds I can pull.

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Nice one Stanza. These reviews are really the only ones that interest me these days.

On another note i'm about to order 2x C-Class BL680 G7's (Quad 10core, 2tb ram, Mezzanine SSD) machines and 4x D2700's with a mixture of drives. Is this sort of thing interesting to people on OCAU?

 

This is something I have a real interest in and would love to see it. Proper enterprise gear is what I really love, unfortunately working in Tassie i don't really get to see it. Best I have seen down here with my clients are a couple of c7000s and some 4000 series SANs.

 

HP is a funny old beast eh? So spot on in their enterprise solutions (mostly) and such a shamozzle elsewhere.

Big thumbs up for your coloured cable tie trick too, I'll remember that one next time i'm dressing a rack. So much easier than handwritten or printed labels etc.

 

Nods with appreciation in advance.

Sure if you have the inclination I am sure many would enjoy it. It's always good to see enterprise grade gear. Features/functionality you just don't see with OEM builds.

I haven't played with any G7 DL380s yet just the G6's. Apart from the chipset/cpu/ilo3 change is there much difference in design / features?

 

Not much (if any) difference at all between G6 and G7 other than what you have stated.