I have a Clariion CX400 being used in a lab with 250 GB sata drives and I want
to pull out the drives out of the drive brackets and replace them with 500 GB or
750 GB drives I buy from ...say Frys or Best Buy. Is there a special firmware
on the EMC drives that may prevent me from doing this or any other technical
reason? TIA.

Boll Weevil <washerdryer at (no spam) maytag.com> kenjka:
I have a Clariion CX400 being used in a lab with 250 GB sata drives and I want
to pull out the drives out of the drive brackets and replace them with 500 GB or
750 GB drives I buy from ...say Frys or Best Buy. Is there a special firmware
on the EMC drives that may prevent me from doing this or any other technical
reason? TIA.

So far I know, it won't be possible, since CLARiiON drives are factory
formatted to 520 bytes per sector...

Other thing you should check is HDD compatibility list for the FLARE OS
you're CX400 is running...

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 07:52:28 +0000 (UTC), caly... at (no spam) fly.srk.fer.hr.invalid wrote:
Boll Weevil <washerdr... at (no spam) maytag.com> kenjka:
I have a Clariion CX400 being used in a lab with 250 GB sata drives and I want
to pull out the drives out of the drive brackets and replace them with 500 GB or
750 GB drives I buy from ...say Frys or Best Buy.  Is there a special firmware
on the EMC drives that may prevent me from doing this or any other technical
reason?  TIA.

So far I know, it won't be possible, since CLARiiON drives are factory
formatted to 520 bytes per sector...

Other thing you should check is HDD compatibility list for the FLARE OS
you're CX400 is running...

Before we completely throw in the towel, check this out:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Storage_Technology/Q_23750574...

I have a Clariion CX400 being used in a lab with 250 GB sata drives and I want
to pull out the drives out of the drive brackets and replace them with 500 GB or
750 GB drives I buy from ...say Frys or Best Buy. Is there a special firmware
on the EMC drives that may prevent me from doing this or any other technical
reason? TIA.

So far I know, it won't be possible, since CLARiiON drives are factory
formatted to 520 bytes per sector...

Other thing you should check is HDD compatibility list for the FLARE OS
you're CX400 is running...

Before we completely throw in the towel, check this out:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Storage_Technology/Q_23750574.html

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009 00:26:37 +0000 (UTC), caly... at (no spam) fly.srk.fer.hr.invalid wrote:

There are some utilities like SCSITool which can format the SCSI-based drive
to specific sector size, but what happens with EMC firmware information
then?...

I think that is the big question at hand.  I personal opinion is that there is
no special sauce in the CX HD as widely publicized other than the 520 bps..  EMC
says they have a special voodoo on the drive and that's why they charge 1000%
more for what you and I can buy it at Frys or Best Buy.  I've searched but no
body has done it yet.  On EMC's support forums all I see is .... "you can't do
that" and "it's not supported" and other similar bull^%%$.  We need to get to
the bottom of this issue.  

Something I found:

How to change the block size of a hard drive using Linux and the scu utility

http://www.doki-doki.net/~lamune/computers/blocksize/index.html

There are some utilities like SCSITool which can format the SCSI-based drive
to specific sector size, but what happens with EMC firmware information
then?...

I think that is the big question at hand. I personal opinion is that there is
no special sauce in the CX HD as widely publicized other than the 520 bps. EMC
says they have a special voodoo on the drive and that's why they charge 1000%
more for what you and I can buy it at Frys or Best Buy. I've searched but no
body has done it yet. On EMC's support forums all I see is .... "you can't do
that" and "it's not supported" and other similar bull^%%$. We need to get to
the bottom of this issue.

There are some utilities like SCSITool which can format the SCSI-based drive
to specific sector size, but what happens with EMC firmware information
then?...

I spoke to a vendor that I buy hard drives and HBA's from (they sell
quite a bit more than that). He says this particular CX is going EOL
soon, if not already, and he suggested that you get all of your
firmware up to date then go with 3rd party maintenance as a 3rd party
company will not give you crap about not putting EMC qualified drives
in the box to begin with. He is not 100% sure about the EMC firmware
voodoo, but says it is quite possible. He also sells used (waranteed)
EMC drives for the array at a ridiculous discount compared to what EMC
would have you pay. I will give you his contact information offline
if you want it. They are a nationwide VAR of servers and storage. If
nothing else you could speak with him or his technical staff to pursue
the EMC microcode issue.

I am pretty sure that if you couldn't get a drive (that you bought
from him) to work in that array, that he would take the drive back.

a lab array. Several of our production CX4 are about to run out of maintenance
and will be decomm'd and will take over the duties of the cx400 in about 9
months. In the mean time, I am just curious as to this particular topic at hand
and want to investigate to see if it can be done.

Boll Weevil <washerdr... at (no spam) maytag.com> kenjka:

a lab array.  Several of our production CX4 are about to run out of maintenance
and will be decomm'd and will take over the duties of the cx400 in about 9
months.  In the mean time, I am just curious as to this particular topic at hand
and want to investigate to see if it can be done.

Excuse me, but CX4 has a default 36 months support, it's a newest EMC's
storage product, and it's been in production since 2009... So, there is no
way that it'll go out of maintenance in 9 mth...

If you're talking about CX400, then it's possible...

Why don't you do a buy-in with EMC? It's recession time, you could get
pretty good discounts on buying new CX4 with CX400 buy-in or some other
financing option from EMC?

--
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 By runf

                                  Damir Lukic, calypso at (no spam) _MAKNIOVO_fly.srk.fer.hr
                                 http://inovator.blog.hr
                                 http://calypso-innovations.blogspot.com/

As mentioned above, there is typically a 3 year maintenance/warranty
included with a purchase of a new device from EMC. And, you do have
quite a bit of leverage now to use it as a trade-in/trade-up as well.
Since it's already "paid for", if it is in good condition and you
don't want to lose it, there are also 3rd party maintenance companies
that are giving you better coverage on Clariion for less than EMC
charges. About 80% less. It's quite staggering what we're actually
paying for storage maintenance from the OEM's. When you compare 3rd
party maintenance vs. OEM you truly have to wonder how you let your
OEM screw you for so long.

As mentioned above, there is typically a 3 year maintenance/warranty
included with a purchase of a new device from EMC. And, you do have
quite a bit of leverage now to use it as a trade-in/trade-up as well.
Since it's already "paid for", if it is in good condition and you
don't want to lose it, there are also 3rd party maintenance companies
that are giving you better coverage on Clariion for less than EMC
charges. About 80% less. It's quite staggering what we're actually
paying for storage maintenance from the OEM's. When you compare 3rd
party maintenance vs. OEM you truly have to wonder how you let your
OEM screw you for so long.

Made a mistake.. its a CX700.

Boll Weevil <washerdryer at (no spam) maytag.com> kenjka:
As mentioned above, there is typically a 3 year maintenance/warranty
included with a purchase of a new device from EMC. And, you do have
quite a bit of leverage now to use it as a trade-in/trade-up as well.
Since it's already "paid for", if it is in good condition and you
don't want to lose it, there are also 3rd party maintenance companies
that are giving you better coverage on Clariion for less than EMC
charges. About 80% less. It's quite staggering what we're actually
paying for storage maintenance from the OEM's. When you compare 3rd
party maintenance vs. OEM you truly have to wonder how you let your
OEM screw you for so long.

Made a mistake.. its a CX700.

That's the biggest CX from that age... Hmmmm, it's quite a good machine...
You could somehow make a trade-in for a CX4-240 or CX4-480 and have a good
price (because of the crisis and recession)...

Other option is to go to Hitachi AMS2000 series which uses SAS drives, and
costs almost half of the same-range EMC CLARiiON... And they will surely
give you quite a discount if replacing this CX700...

That's the biggest CX from that age... Hmmmm, it's quite a good machine...
You could somehow make a trade-in for a CX4-240 or CX4-480 and have a good
price (because of the crisis and recession)...

Other option is to go to Hitachi AMS2000 series which uses SAS drives, and
costs almost half of the same-range EMC CLARiiON... And they will surely
give you quite a discount if replacing this CX700...

Do you have any first hand reports on the AMS2000?