Proliant 3000 Cabling Help?

[imdaryl]

I have a Compaq Proliant 3000, with 6, 18.2 GB hard drives on board. I purchased a U1 Storage unit and a smart array 221 controller. I need to know if I need to change the internal cabling? I see the controller has a connector for an internal scsi cable. Do I need to disconnect, where the hard drive scsi cable plugs into the motherboard and plug it into the controller? Will I have to reload the OS?
Thanks

 

[pharwood]

If I recall the 221 is a single channel controller. That being the case you can use it for the internal drives or the external enclosure but not both. To use on internal drives you would have to move the internal connector to the 221 array card, but that would prohibit use of the external drive array.

You might consider going to ebay and getting yourself a 3200 card. You can pick them up for 5 to 10 bucks. Be careful in what you get, the 3200 come in 16 to 64 meg of onboard ram. If you use a 3200 and if it has a daughter card, you have to remove the daughter card (card near the connectors) if you plan on using one channel for internal drives and one channel for your drive enclosure.

Your question 2 on the OS is a little more involved. First you should get the drivers setup in the os before changing anything. Simply install the board in the server as is bot the unit as normal and load the drivers in the os before you change anything. Once drivers are installed disconnect the cable from the existing controller and attach it to channel 1 of the new array. If the drives are already setup in an array, the 3200 will pick up the settings from the drives.

Use smartstart version 5.5 and setup the other channel on your enclosure.

Good luck,
Phil

 

[imdaryl]

Thanks for the reply pharwood
I have 6 drives onboard the proliant 3000 and have a U1 external storage unit6 drives also. I have both a 221 and 3200 controller, but having trouble loading rompaq(unsuccessful upgrade). I'll try to get them both working.
Are you saying that in order to utilize all the drives as is, I need to remove the daughterboard? Do it need to connect the internal SCSI cable to the controller, or leave it connected to the motherboard? By the way, I'm going with Linux as an OS, Fedore Core 4 to be exact.
Thanks

 

[imdaryl]

I will plan on using the 3200, If I can only use one (onborad HD's)or the other (onboard or the U1) as far as the 221 controller goes.

 

[pharwood]

Perhaps best to just use the 3200 array card only. It is two channels so you can use 1 for the internal drives and 2 for the drive enclosure. It supports 15 drives per channel. That would mean that the cable from the internal drive cage would be moved to channel 1 of the 3200 card. You can set up the arrays independently on each of the two sets on drives.
The scsi cable to the external drive cage would then attach to channel 2. All this is assuming you have a single channel external enclosure. (just one scsi cable connection to the external enclosure)

That daughter card I referred to enables you to use both channels externally. Since one is internal, you don’t want that card daughter card installed. Most of the time it will give you an error if not removed and using the internal drives anyway.

Fedora can be rather funky on the drivers. Unless you are really into Linux it may be easier to set up your hardware and arrays and then do the fedora install letting it configure all the components found.

When installing fedora there are software “switches” you will probably have to use in the install setup line to enable it to install properly in the graphics mode. That’s another subject.


Phil

 

[imdaryl]

Thank You pharwood.
I'm sure more questions are coming, right now I'm in the process of configuring hardware, I had Fedora core 4 installed already, it's a bit quirky, but so was windows when I first started, I'm also a newbie to Linux.

 

[pharwood]

Good luck.
I'm not hanging around this board, just stumbled on it by accident and tried to help answer a few questions for some people.
Phil

 

[imdaryl]

I removed the daughterboard, tried to load the rompaq for the 3200, still unsuccessful.

 

[pharwood]

Daughter board" has nothing to do with flashing the firmware. That is an issue with your disk, cd, or your update software or perhaps even the 3200 card itself. It should work with what ever firmware version is on it now, if not buy one off ebay. (5 to 10 bucks)

Phil