| Q1. |
What are the benefits of consolidating storage with a SAN? |
| A1. |
Shared storage solution offers the following benefits:
- Better utilization of overall disk space. No more "stranded" storage.
- Reduced IT and storage management costs
- Fewer number of management tools to learn
- Increased data availability by implementing consolidation
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| Q2. |
What does dual "Active/Active" controllers mean? |
| A2. |
It means both controllers are ready to process I/Os and provide redundancy. If a controller fails. the second controller can handle the I/O requests until the failed controller is brought back online. |
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| Q3. |
Why are Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives considered enterprise class drives? |
| A3. |
SAS drives are built on proven SCSI technology and have similar internal components (heads, bearings) as Fibre Channel drives. MTBF is the same as Fibre Channel and they are designed to operate in a heavy use, 24x7 computing environment. |
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| Q4. |
Do the HP StorageWorks MSA2000 arrays support multiple operating systems simultaneously? |
| A4. |
Yes. Customers can attach ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems to a single MSA2000 array. This feature is also known as Heterogeneous OS support. |
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| Q5. |
What is RAID 6 and how does it benefit the customers? |
| A5. |
RAID 6 provides the best fault tolerance because any two drives can fail without affecting data integrity. RAID 6 uses the equivalent of two drive's capacities for parity but stripes the parity information on all drives. RAID 6 requires at least four drives and n-2 drives are used for parity. |
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| Q6. |
What are RAID Levels 10 & 50 and what are the benefits? |
| A6. |
RAID 10 (1+0): Mirroring and striping without parity. The most popular of the multiple RAID levels, RAID 10 combines the best features of striping and mirroring to yield large arrays with high performance in most uses and superior fault tolerance. RAID 10 is a stripe across a number of mirrored sets. RAID 10 has been increasing dramatically in popularity as hard disks become cheaper and the four-drive minimum is legitimately seen as much less of an obstacle. RAID 10 provides better fault tolerance. It provides very good to excellent overall performance by combining the speed of RAID 0 with the redundancy of RAID 1 without requiring parity calculations.
RAID 50 forms a large array by combining the block striping and parity of RAID 5 with the straight block striping of RAID 0. RAID 50 improves upon the performance of RAID 5 through the addition of RAID 0, particularly during writes. It also provides better fault tolerance than the single RAID level does. |
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| Q7. |
What is RAID 3 and does it have its' advantages? |
| A7. |
RAID 3 combines striping and parity, but it puts all the parity information on a separate parity disk. It faster than RAID 5 on sequential reads and writes, and nearly as fast as RAID 0 (striping), with the advantage of data protection. RAID 3 is not optimized for random writes and only mediocre on random reads. It is excellent at handling large files that require high transfer performance with redundancy, especially serving or editing large files for multimedia and publishing. |
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| Q8. |
How does HP StorageWorks MSA2000 450 GB SAS HDD benefit the customer? |
| A8. |
They provide higher-capacity enterprise-class dual-port SAS drives to support DP capable MSA storage for MSA2000 arrays. This new drive also gives up to a 50% increase in potential capacity while retaining the rack density of the smaller drives. |
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| Q9. |
What does NEBS certified mean in the case of the HP StorageWorks 2024 Modular Smart Array 2.5-in Drive Bay Carrier-Grade Chassis (SFF)? |
| A9. |
A product earns NEBS certification when it passes very stringent tests performed by an independent company to prove the worthiness and ruggedness under the most extreme of heat, dust, vibrations, humidity, etc. This is a designation primarily required by Telco companies for use in their central locations. The AM337A Carrier-grade chassis along with the MSA2300fc G2 controller and the 146 GB and 72 GB SFF SAS drives qualifies for “NEBS Level 3 (GR-63 and GR-1089), Seismic Zone 4” certifications. |
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