5.3 Flash Modules
The RamSan-500 comes with 9 Flash modules in a RAID 5 configuration. This section will go over various failure conditions and what must be done to correct them.
The Flash modules in the RamSan-500 are designed and manufactured by Texas Memory Systems. They incorporate proprietary technology to interface with the RamSan backplane and cannot by used outside of the RamSan-500. Internal to the modules, multiple proprietary error corrections technologies are used to make a single module extremely robust and capable of smoothly handling multiple failures of the internal Flash media. With this technology a module should last at least 3 years, even under a continuous write load. If the IO load is a mix of reads and writes Flash modules can last even longer.
Internal to each module there may be 1 or 2 regions (depending on the ordered capacity) for Flash storage. These regions are largely independent of one another and are each given their own status indicator LED on the front of the Flash module as illustrated in the figure below.
Flash Status
Indicator LEDs
Figure 30 - Flash Module
The LEDs can be used to determine the state of the module based on the following:
Steady Green | Power, status good |
Blinking Green | Activity, status good |
Orange | RAID Rebuilding, Degraded, Disabling |
Blinking Orange | User initiated identification of module |
| (See Section 4.4.2) |
Red | Fail |
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