Compaq Infortrend manual What kind of host application?, Dual loop, hub, or switch?

larger drives can be more efficient than that of many but smaller drives.

3.How many drives would you like to appear to the host computer?

It must be decided what capacity will be included in a logical configuration of drives, be it a logical drive or a logical volume. A logical configuration of drives will appear to the host as a single capacity volume.

You may compose a large logical volume consisting of drives on different drive channels, and have it partitioned into smaller partitions. Each partition will appear as an independent capacity volume. In a performance-oriented configuration, you may configure the same number of drives into several RAID 0 logical drives just to get the most out of the array performance.

4. What kind of host application?

The frequency of read/write activities can vary from one host application to another. The application can be a SQL server, Oracle server, Informix, or other data base server of a transaction-based nature. Applications like video playback and video post-production editing require read/write activities of larger files coming in a sequential order.

Choose an appropriate RAID level for what is the most important for a given application – capacity, availability, or performance. Before creating your RAID, you need to choose an optimization scheme and optimize each array/controller for your application. Stripe size and write policy can be adjusted on a per logical drive basis.

5. Dual loop, hub, or switch?

Unpredictable situations like a cable coming loose can cause system down time. Fibre channel dual loop or redundant data paths using flexible LUN mapping method can guarantee there is no single point of failure. The use of Fibre channel hub or switch makes cabling and topology more flexible. Change the channel mode, connection type, and other associated settings to adjust the controller to your demands.

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