I'm looking to buy some extra disk space for a HP ML 350 G5 server. It is for simple file-serving - not OS/system stuff. HP harddisks are insanely expensive, so I'm tempted to buy some other brand instead. I have heard that they sometime use special firmware on their disks, but I suspect that might just be HP spreading rumors to sell disks.
Does anyone have experience using non-HP disks? Any features not working, or not being able to build the RAID at all?
I'm looking at 2.5" SAS Seagate drives - Constellation 500 GB (7.2k) or Savvio 600 GB (10k).
Non-brand disks usually work perfectly in brand servers. On some server models, management tools can complain about "non original disks" (I saw this happen on IBM servers), but apart from this, there are no technical issues in using them.
The server's vendor will probably not support such a configuration, though.
BTW, "brand" disks are usually nothing more than standard disks with a different label on them.
be careful of the server you buy - the mainstream servers(e.g. dl350/360/380, mlxxx etc) need hp caddies for the disks. ml110/115 and others can use standard disks without caddies. you can buy the caddies from international 3rd parties you lose the ability to apply firmware updates to the drives themselves. this is rarely needed although there were some serious issues just over a year ago. very unlikely to be needed though - check the manufacturer part code carefully as there are lots of variations in the models - cheapest options involve lff or large form factor disks ie standard 3.5" sas disks are over-hyped and much more expensive. p410 or greater raid controller is recommended and also battery backed write controller which ar often overlooked but very important for increased performance and reliability