@rgijsen
If you have a dual controller MSA, you can make a POOL on each controller. We do not support multiple POOLs on the same controller (except in a failover situation). I would suggest that you purchase the SSDs (Max 2 per Pool, <4TB) and use the FREE Read-Cache feature. If that is not enough performance boost you can purchase the PERF Tier License and convert the drives over to a READ/WRITE component. One thing to be aware of is depending on the workload applied, SSDs may not improve performance. Sequential workloads will be serviced from the spinning media, random workloads will be serviced from SSD.
Note: There is no in-box conversion of Linear to Virtual storage. This is in essence a backup, wipe, replace of the data.
Make sure they are using the best practices on DISK-GROUP creation to maximize the performance.
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/getpdf.aspx/4AA4-6892ENW.pdf
There is a statement in the Best Practices Guide about POOL Balancing across the “2 pools”. And other inferences to 2 pools throughout the document.
In fact to maximize the performance of the array, you NEED to create 2 POOLs. Each POOL is serviced by one controller, much like creating VDISKs in Linear storage where a VDISK is owned by a controller, all the DISK-GROUPs in a POOL will be serviced by a single controller.
The MSA Auto-Tiering is MUCH simpler than other products. Here are the basic decision points:
- What RAID type (RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10)?
- How many disks? (see BP Guide for optimal performance)
- Which POOL? A or B (Assuming dual controller)
That’s it. Based upon the disk characteristics the new DISK-GROUP will either be Performance (SSD), Standard (10k/15k SAS), Archive (7.2k MDL-SAS).
Hope that helps!
