Bill,

   The questions were formulated by OpenMPE users, not HP.  They were
presented by users I know and respect in an interactive fashion during a
customer needs discussion panel.  That comment aside, thanx for all the good
detailed information.

Thanx,
   Jon

Quoting Bill Green <[log in to unmask]>:

> All,
>
> If I had to guess these questions are issues formulated by HP as a scare
> tactic.  Similar to the issues 2 years ago or more regarding 9x7 parts
> being scarce.  This is false.
>
> Firmware issues related to JBOD (Just Bunch of Discs) is hardly a
> concern.  Typically, if you use the same Seagate product number as the
> original HP disc drive it will work with MPEiX.  Obviously, you should
> always us an HP branded drive if you can.  There are infrequent issues
> with firmware on JBOD.  However, RAID or Disk Arrays is a different
> issue.  With JBOD, the typical problem is ODE/Mapper will not recognize
> the device or Mapper recognizes the device but will not mount the
> volume.  These issues should be identified before a drive is used for a
> replacement.  Also, on the HPUX platform there are times were predict or
> EMS will complain that a drive is either not the correct rev. or not a
> high enough rev.
>
> Years ago before HP decided to discontinue manufacturing disc drives
> (blame the Unix crowd for this) there was a great feature called "write
> back".  I believe this feature was introduced in the 2Gb C3010M1 and
> C2490AM disc drives.  This feature was only available on the commercial
> system disc drives.  Not OEM.  Basically, it prevented loss of data or
> corruption in the event of power loss.  Since HP started using Seagate,
> Quantum, IBM drives this feature was no longer available.  When the OEM
> drives were introduced 10 years ago or so HP highly recommended
> purchasing a UPS.
>
> The moral of this story is to purchase a HP RAID Disc Subsystem.
> Prevent installs and reloads.  You will be surprised how inexpensive a
> refurbished HP RAID system is for a typical 100Gb or less solution.  For
> performance concerns always configure for RAID 1/0.
>
> Regards,
>
> Bill Green
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Backus [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 7:07 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Firmware
>
>    Another topic to be added to the advocacy effort has been the issue
> of
> firmware.  This issue takes on several flavors, disks, tape drives,
> cpu's,
> etc.  For now let's start with the issue of the firmware on disk drives,
> specifically SCSI-se and SCSI-fw.
>
>    The topic has been raised a couple of different ways:
>
> 1)  If somebody purchased an HP "Branded" disk drive from the used
> equipment
> market would they be able to get the latest firmware for said drive and
> upgrade it?
>
> 2)  If somebody purchased an HP "blessed", but not "Branded" disk drive
> (by
> this it's ment that it's a model that HP has branded, but this
> particular
> drive was not purchased and branded by HP before being sold originally),
> would
> they be able to get the latest HP firmware for said drive and upgrade
> it?
>
> 3)  What about other SCSI se/fw drives, that "in theory" should work on
> native
> e3000 hardware but have neither been "blessed" or "branded"?
>
>    One of the questions HP had back to the group was what is the greater
> need
> and interest?  So, since those same HP people are in the list and the
> list
> represents the larger group then just what was in the room, can you
> respond
> with your thoughts and discussion on the topic?
>
> Thanx,
>    Jon Backus
>
>