Hotplug vs. non-hot plug disks

Question

I have more or less hardware question related to hotplug or non-hotplug hdd. I plan to get HP P2000 G3 FC/iSCSI storage system, and I was going to order the disks. One costs 300eur.. So my question

1) May I buy some generic WD disk and install it in HDD bay(frame) bought from ebay for 30eur ? Will I lose hotplug functionality? Difference is 200eur on each disk.

2) What is the difference between hotplug and nonhotplug harddrive in fact? I do not mean that you can on-the-fly push a disk to the array, but what are physical differences between them. Because I've got a feeling they divide this market only because it will let the prices of these disks so high (normal home user does not need any hotplug feature, let's name it hotplug so that business people will buy it)

Am I right, or I am not ? :)

Thank you.

Solution 1

This answer is an update on the current status about the question.

As of Gen8, you cannot put non-HP disk into a HP server, as the HDD trays became intelligent.

The trays communicate with the server so the server can log what HDD (with what serial number) you put into the server.

HP has some marketing jibjab about how this solution increases stability and whatnot, but this primarily exist to block attempts to get support on a non-supported disks by raising a support ticket with a supported server's serial several times (like having N storage JBOD, one with support, the others without support, and reporting all failed disks through the supported JBOD).

The above example is a direct attempt to avoid support fees, but this violation of support agreement can happen in good faith.

By default a standard or nearline disk has 1 year support and enterprise labeled disks have 3 years, but buying a Care Pack to a server increases the support time for all the disks inside it, to 3 years.

Let's say you have a storage (A), with the default 1 year support, and another storage (B) with 3 year support. In the 2nd year a disk fails in storage B, and you were to replace it immediately with a disk from Storage A (then have support for that failed disk, but put the changed disk on the shelf). If the replaced disk would fail, you couldn't have it change by HP support, as this disk had only 1 year support. But you would be raising a support ticket to storage B, which has 3 year support, so it would look that all the disks inside have 3 year support.

These smart HDD trays, along with the server log now give HP a tool that can detect this and HP can reject the support.

Solution 2

If you find it important not to turn off your SAN (and possibly all servers using it) WHEN (and not IF) disk dies, then hot plug is the only solution. Your warranty might not apply if you're using non hp disks.

Comments

[CarloBaldini]

+1 Non-HP disks might not even work.

[John]

I always insert non-HP disk into DL proliant servers and everything always worked, HP disk is not HP disk actually, but simple WD disk with HP HDD frame, don't be so skeptic :)

[Overmind]

Works fine for all new Dell servers.