Dell PowerVault MD1120 - Manual (Page 3)

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ POWERVAULT™ MD1XXX FAMILY SAS SOLUTION VER A02
PAGE 3 6/16/2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. I NTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) .................................................................................................................................................... 5
2. R ECOMMENDED M AINTENANCE FOR D ELL P OWER V AULT MD1 XXX F AMILY SAS S OLUTION .................................... 7
3. D ELL SAS P RODUCT O FFERING ......................................................................................................................................... 8
SAS Cabling .......................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Physical Drive Support ........................................................................................................................................................ 10
Third Party Hardware Support ............................................................................................................................................ 10
Server Support ...................................................................................................................................................................... 10
4. P OWER V AULT MD1 XXX F AMILY S TORAGE E NCLOSURE D ETAILS ............................................................................... 11
Enclosure Modes .................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Unified Topology .................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Split Topology ....................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Daisy-Chaining Multiple PowerVault MD1xxx Family Storage Enclosures .................................................................... 12
PowerVault MD1xxx Family – Common Features and Capabilities ................................................................................ 13
5. PERC 5/E AND PERC 6/E C ONTROLLER - D ETAILED F EATURES .................................................................................. 17
PERC 5/E .............................................................................................................................................................................. 17
PERC 6/E .............................................................................................................................................................................. 17
Considerations when implementing a RAID Solution ........................................................................................................ 17
Controller Features ................................................................................................................................................................................ 17
Capacity Requirements ........................................................................................................................................................................... 19
6. D ELL O PEN M ANAGE S ERVER A DMINISTRATOR ............................................................................................................. 21
Managing the PERC 5/E and PERC 6/E Controllers and the PowerVault MD1xxx Family Storage Enclosures ......... 21
Using the Create Virtual Disk Wizards ............................................................................................................................... 21
Reconfiguring Virtual Disks -- RAID Migration and Capacity Expansion ....................................................................... 22
Moving Physical Disks and Virtual Disk Configurations – Disk Roaming and Disk Migration ..................................... 23
Importing Migrated Virtual Disks ....................................................................................................................................... 24
7. S TORAGE A PPLICATIONS AND C OMPONENTS .................................................................................................................. 27
Identify customer usage model and needs ........................................................................................................................... 27
Picking a solution based on the application profile ............................................................................................................ 27
Application-Specific Guidelines ........................................................................................................................................... 30
E-Mail Servers ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 30
Web Servers ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 31
Database or Online Transaction Processing Servers ........................................................................................................................... 32
File Servers .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 34
Streaming Media Servers ....................................................................................................................................................................... 37
Hot Spares ............................................................................................................................................................................. 38
8. S UMMARY AND C ONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................................ 39
A PPENDIX – A: R EFERENCES .................................................................................................................................................... 40
9. A PPENDIX – B: G LOSSARY ............................................................................................................................................... 41
10. A PPENDIX – C: R EVISION H ISTORY ............................................................................................................................. 42