Dear HP3000-L folks,

We may be purchasing a refurb VA7100 (to replace a couple of Nikes that go
off support on June 30 '04) this week or next, and I had a couple of
questions regarding what to purchase.

1. We're hoping to get a dual-controller 7100; I've read that each
controller stores its own copy of the array configuration, in order to be
able to fail over if one controller goes bad.  However, I've also read that
the 3000 (an N4000 box) doesn't automatically fail over, so if we have one
controller on the array that goes bad, we'll still have to unplug the FC
cable from the failed controller and reattach to the good controller -- kind
of a 'manual failover'. Is my understanding correct?  If so, is there any
benefit to getting two adapter cards for the e3000 box?

2. The array comes with SDM commandview software for one host. From my
reading, I've discovered that either HP-UX or Windows can be used to
configure the array. My question is: how does the configuration host access
the array? Is there a serial port used for configuration, or will we need a
FC adapter card for whatever host we use for configuration?

3.  (ok, a 'few' questions, not a 'couple' :-)  We're planning on getting
nine of the 15kRPM 36GB drives. Is there a 'best way' to calculate LUN size?
(we're planning on using RAID 1+0 and not RAID5, for performance reasons.)

I'd appreciate any insight anyone can offer. Many thanks to donna for the
assistance she's already provided.

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