Storage
By Manjusha Gopakumar
Vishal Kadam
Paul Winston
Exploring the Dell
PowerVault MD3000
Storage System
The Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000 external RAID enclosure allows multiple servers to access a shared pool of expandable storage, helping enterprises avoid the costs and complexities of internal storage. This article outlines the hardware, configuration, and management features of this storage system.
Related Categories:
Backup, recovery, and archiving (BURA)
Dell PowerVault storage
Direct attach storage (DAS)
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
Storage
Visit www.dell.com/powersolutions for the complete category index.
The Dell PowerVault MD3000 storage array is designed to provide flexible,
rity. Its integration of two
The PowerVault MD3000 external RAID array can sup- port up to
•Mirrored data cache of up to 512 MB on each RAID controller
•
•Redundant,
•Transparent failover for clustered operating systems to help maximize data protection
•Virtual disk snapshot and virtual disk copy creation
•RAID level migration, capacity expansion, consistency
checks, and
Figure 1 compares PowerVault MD3000 features with those of the PowerVault MD1000.
Configuration options for the Dell PowerVault MD3000
Administrators can configure the PowerVault MD3000 as part of a nonredundant configuration or a redundant clus- ter configuration. Nonredundant configurations are recom- mended only for noncritical data storage; this type of configuration provides only a single data path, meaning a failed or removed cable, HBA, or RAID controller could cause the storage path to fail.
Redundant cluster configurations, in contrast, provide high availability for critical data and depend primarily on physical connectivity and the host multipath software. If a component fails or an error occurs on the data path to the primary RAID controller, the multipath
The PowerVault MD3000 supports two redundant cluster configurations:
•Single port: Administrators can use this mode with a single storage path and
| DELL POWER SOLUTIONS | May 2007 | Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Rev. 2. | |
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