I don’t think we have a standard of Maximum number of drives for a Smart Array card, however we have the Maximum Volume Capacity.
And [a single RAID set] you said is the logical volume.
Please refer to the following documents.
You said [maximum number of drives in a single RAID set is 16 for the P212], could you please point me out which document is written about this limitation?
[P212]
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quic ... 3_div.HTML
logical Volumes Supported
Zero Memory, Up to 2 logical volumes
256mb cache, Up to 64 logical volumes
Maximum Volume Capacity
6TB (6 x 1TB SATA 3.5" MDL HDD)
NOTE: Support for greater than 2TB in a single logical drive.
[P222]
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quic ... 7_div.HTML
Logical Drives Supported
Up to 64 logical volumes
Maximum Volume Capacity
12TB (4 x 3TB SAS/SATA 3.5" MDL HDD) internal
144TB (48 x 3TB SAS/SATA 3.5" MDL HDD) external with 4xD2600
90TB (100 x 900GB SAS 2.5" HDD) external with 4xD2700
Capacity
Given the increasing need for high performance and rapid capacity expansion, the SA-P222 offers:
Up to 12TB of internal storage with 4x internal 3TB 3.5" SAS/SATA LFF hard drives and up to 144TB of external storage with 4x HP D2600 Disk Enclosures and 48 x 3TB 3.5" SAS/SATA LFF hard drives.
Up to 3.6TB of total storage per controller with 4x internal 900GB SFF SAS hard drives and 90TB of external storage with 4x HP D2700 Disk Enclosures and 100 x 900GB SFF SAS hard drives.
Up to 4TB of total storage per controllerwith 4x internal 1TB SFF SATA hard drives and 100TB of external storage with 4x HP D2700 Disk Enclosures and 100 x 1TB SFF SATA hard drives.
[HP Smart Array Controllers for HP ProLiant Servers User Guide]
http://bizsupport2.austin.hp.com/bc/doc ... 608507.pdf
32 page P212 and P222 specifications
P.S
Below document is somehow old, but it list the recommendation for RAID 5.
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/serve ... _v_1+0.pdf
3 page
With RAID 5, it is not recommended to configure a logical drive array with greater than 14 drives due to risk of data loss.