EMC VNXe3100 - Upgrading Drives

joshuamccorkle0508 · 2014-10-01T18:30:16.000Z

I’m looking to upgrade the drives in an EMC VNXe3100. It currently has 12x 600GB 15k’s and we are looking to replace them with 1-2 TB drives. Couple of questions.

1.) Does the raid interface on the device support hot swap upgrading. Where you replace a drive with a higher capacity drive and it rolls it right into the array. I figure it doesn’t but thought I would ask.

2.) I’ve been told that you have to put EMC brand drives in the device and you can’t use “aftermarket” drives, is this true?

Thanks!

StorageNinja · 2014-10-01T18:41:52.000Z

No. This unit does not support the same RAID levels with NL-SAS drives and 15K drives.
Yes. Expect it to be cheaper to buy a new array.

sean-storagecraft · 2014-10-02T02:17:52.000Z

Nicabus,

What are you using the VNXe for? What application requirements do you have?

joshuamccorkle0508 · 2014-10-02T10:22:33.000Z

We are using it as a SAN for a Windows 2012 server.

it-gnome · 2014-10-02T10:39:01.000Z

I have had a VNXe3100 for 2 years now. I started out with 6 2TB 7.2k RPM NL-SAS drives and recently added 6 900GB 10k RPM SAS drives. I use it strictly for NFS storage for my VMs. I do not use it for iSCSI.

Be aware that the VNXe3100 DOES NOT support RAID-10 with NL-SAS drives. It will only allow RAID-6 or RAID-5 with NL-SAS drives. So if your current SAS drives are in RAID-10, the new NL-SAS drives will NOT work with your current array configuration.

The drives were not cheap. The 6 900GB drives cost about $7K. I had the extra in the budget this year and the addition will allow me to extend the useful life of the unit for few more years before it’s retired. So it was worth it to me.