- I'm pretty sure there are BIOS checks on the drives, there are on other, older IBM disk arrays
2 They don't supply 2TB disks for it yet, but they likely will do and it will almost certainly support them
3 Yes, you can put in as many or as few disks, though obviously less than 5-6 it doesn't make much sense to be using it
4 The DS3400 is the identical array with a fibre channel interface, it's benchmarked using SPC-1 and SPC-2 here, the performance will be very similar
5 The server's SAS card sees the RAID controller in the DS3200 rather than the raw disks. The presentation is controlled via the IBM Storage Manager client software which connects over TCP/IP. You can build multiple RAID arrays on the DS3200, which would each appear as single disks to the server.
6 The full configuration guide is available as an IBM Redbook and includes multiple screenshots
7 The DS3200 internal controller handles the RAID
The IBM DS3000 series arrays are pretty good at what they do, they're also pretty dumb compared to most other arrays out there, but they are cheap. It's based on an LSI model, Dell sell an essentially identical MD3000 disk array.
Hope that all helps
Is there any way you can image that server onto another set of drives that are server grade, rather than altering the way those drives are designed to work? It sounds like you have a little time on your hands, since nothing has actually failed.
Running anything that alters how a HDD works on a production server is bad news, IMO. Using these types of drives that have constant activity is going to wear them out incredibly fast. I recommend trying a different approach that involves new hardware, as much as you probably don't want to do that.
Best Answer
I've ran the greenpower drives in a RAID configuration for a couple of years now in three different setups: connected to motherboard for software RAID, connected to a RAID card, inside of a Drobo. Performance was always the best on the RAID card because it never let the drives go to sleep, so there wasn't a delay while the drives woke up. However, because of this it always meant that power savings came only from lower rotational speeds and not their ability to sleep. Directly to the motherboard worked pretty well, but the spin up times were annoying. I was using the drives to record hdtv and I'd tend to lose the first few seconds while the drives woke up. Finally, I got a Drobo and put the drives in there. Spin up times are really annoying now, but I've stopped using them for primary storage. I just migrate data there as long term storage.
So, no problems with rotational speeds. It seemed that my rather cheap (~$200) RAID card handled it with no problem. But just be aware that you're not going to get the same power savings you'd get on a desktop machine if you've get them connected to a dedicated card.