John,

I will try to address two of the issues you raised.

Disk I/O performance can be much better on an N-class system, but it
will depend on your current utilization.  If disk is not a bottleneck,
it may not matter which type of disks you use.  There are certainly
many better options than a Nike in RAID-5 if performance is your
primary concern.

As to LVD or HVD, the rated speeds of an LVD card is 80 MB/sec, and
an HVD with F/W SCSI is 20 MB/sec.  But that may not make a bit of
difference if you are not even approaching these limits.  The only
LVD drives supported on 7.0 are the drives internal to the system.
For external drives, HVD is only option right now on 7.0.

I will also address the multi-processor questions.  The same chassis is
used whether you have 1, 2, 3 or 4 processors, and for all the different
processor speeds.  It is simply a field upgrade to add additional
processors.  When you go from 2 to 3 processors, your upgrade includes
moving up a tier in software.  So if you have a 1-way or 2-way, you are
in the lower tier, while a 3-way or 4-way is in the upper tier.  All of
these are simple field upgrades once you have the N4000-100-440.  The
N4000-400-440 you mention is already a 4-way system; that's what the
400 means in the name.  A 1-way system would be an N4000-100-440.

Kevin Cooper
HP e3000 Performance Team
Commercial Systems Division
[log in to unmask]


John MacLerran ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
: I/O cards.  Is LVD better (i.e. faster, more throughput, etc.) than HVD
: using Fast Wide SCSI?  We're currently on a 969KS/400 with a Nike Model
: 20 configured as RAID5, so we're trying to optimize I/O performance as
: much as possible. I'd appreciate any recommendations on this.

: We're currently looking at the N4000-440 line. The brochures I've read
: indicate that all the N-Class boxes have 12 PCI slots, but we were
: wondering about multiple CPUs also. Does anyone know if there is a
: different cabinet for the 2, 3, and 4 processor boxes, or is upgrading
: just a matter of adding processor boards. Is that a field upgrade, or a
: cabinet swap?  I have also heard that in the tiered support pricing
: scheme that HP has adopted, the tier cost is actually the 'potential'
: usage cost. Meaning that if you get an N4000-400-440, that you'll be in
: the 4-processor tier, even if you currently only have 1 processor board
: installed. Is that true?

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