Modular Smart Array 500 Storage - retired

The Modular Smart Array 500 is a storage system designed for single and multiple path two-node clustering as well as direct attached storage (DAS) with up to 4 server nodes. Providing high data availability at SCSI economics, the Modular Smart Array 500 offers superior data protection and increased uptime with redundant controllers, power supplies and fans and Multipath software option to provide multiple I/O paths to the same logical volume. Because Modular Smart Array 500 is SCSI based, there are no Fibre Channel infrastructure requirements such as hubs, switches and cables, allowing for significantly lower initial investment when compared to FC-SANs. Armed with DtS (DAS to SAN) technology, theMSA500 adaptive infrastructure permits seamless conversion from SCSI protocol to the fibre-channel basedMSA1000 for additional scalability.

• The Modular Smart Array 500 is the new name of the Smart Array Cluster Storage and includes all the functionality with additional OS and server support
  • Support for Windows Server 2003
  • Support for United Linux 1.0
  • Support for Novell NetWare 6.5
• NEW Smart Array Multipath Software v.2.0
• NEW MSA500 Starter Kit and MSA500 High Availability Kits

Remote sites and distributed environments requiring high availability computing: bank branches, retail locations, regional distribution centers, web hosting, engineering workgroups, manufacturing, Telco (Voice over IP), and medium sized businesses.

Problems and Requirements

Customers require:

• Higher level of availability for remote or distributed environments to minimize downtime
• Flexible storage capacity expansion with advanced data protection features
• Minimize storage cost through maximizing storage usage capacity utilization and minimizing infrastructure costs
• Simple to deploy solutions based on industry standard technology, configuration and management tools
• Remote management capability to configure and maintain compute and storage with out onsite staff

Typical Use

Remote Office:

A customer has several remote offices that require local computing resources to run a small transactional data base, mail and messaging and file and print. These are small offices and do not have dedicated on site IT staff to maintain the servers, storage and applications. This customer has 3 requirements:

1) minimize cost
2) high availability
3) remote management capability

Because this customer has several of these remote offices to furnish with Servers and storage they are need solutions that minimize the infrastructure complexity and minimizes the cost. This customer also wants to deploy highly available solutions to minimize down time. They will not have onsite IT support at these locations and would like to protect against hw and application failures. Finally, this customer would like the ability to monitor HW status and configure the equipment remotely.

Solving the Customer Problem

This customer chooses ProLiant servers configured in a cluster with the Modular Smart Array 500. They add the 4-port IO module to the MSA500 to improved fault tolerance against a connectivity failure. They utilize the web-based Array Configuration Utility (ACU) and Insight Manager to monitor the health and configure the Storage and servers.

Typical Use

Clustering & High Availability

The Modular Smart Array 500 is an ideal storage solution for ProLiant Server and applications requiring the higher level of uptime provided by clustering 2 servers for high availability. For additional high availability, theMSA500 can be configured with redundant components with the addition of redundant controllers, and Smart Array Multipath Software for HBA and connectivity redundancy.

Direct Attached Storage

Managing capacity growth can be a challenge. The Modular Smart Array 500 give you the ability to expand storage capacity beyond the limitation of internal storage and better take advantage of capacity pool by sharing it among multiple servers (up to 4). No wasted capacity captive inside a server, now you can allocate the excess storage capacity to other servers and get better utilization of your storage investment. It also easy to add additional capacity as need with online capacity expansion and volume extension tools.

Solving the Customer Problem

• Easy to deploy and low cost, the Modular Smart Array 500 is ideal for 2-node clustering.
• Maximum storage capacity of up to 2 TB in 14 disk slots, allowing ample headroom to grow.
• Advanced data protection and high availability features such as redundant controllers with Battery Backed Write Cache that is removable and transportable, RAID-ADG, redundant fans and power supplies.
• Hardware failures may create significant downtime leading to revenue loss and customer dissatisfaction. Create two-node clusters with increased fault tolerance by providing dual paths to the shared storage reducing the impact of failed HBAs and the cables.
• Simple to configure and deploy, low cost Multipath solution.
• Deploying independent servers with their own internal storage may leave unused drive capacity in each server. By using the Modular Smart Array 500 as the shared storage component for up to four servers, hard drive capacity is maximized. Migrating hard drives from the ProLiant serves to the Modular Smart Array 500 is simple with DtS technology.
• SCSI based solution that lowers the initial investment requirements by leveraging existent infrastructure. By using familiar SCSI protocol the Modular Smart Array 500 does not require additional expensive specialized training.
• Configuration tools such as ACU and CIM-7 ease the deployment and management requirements.
• Offers a choice of industry leading ProLiant servers with which to cluster.