User`s guide

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ MD1000 SAS SOLUTIONS VER A00
PAGE 3 5/06/2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................................4
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)....................................................................................................................................................5
2. RECOMMENDED MAINTENANCE FOR YOUR DELL POWERVAULT MD1000 SAS SOLUTION .........................................6
3. DELL’S SAS PRODUCT OFFERING .....................................................................................................................................7
SAS Cabling............................................................................................................................................................................8
Physical Drive Support ..........................................................................................................................................................8
3
rd
Party Hardware support...................................................................................................................................................9
Server Support........................................................................................................................................................................9
4. POWERVAULT MD1000 STORAGE ENCLOSURE DETAILS................................................................................................ 9
Enclosure Modes ....................................................................................................................................................................9
Unified Topology.................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Split Topology.......................................................................................................................................................................10
Daisy-Chaining Multiple PowerVault MD1000 Storage Enclosures................................................................................10
PowerVault MD1000 – Common Features and Capabilities............................................................................................11
5. PERC 5/E CONTROLLER - DETAILED FEATURES ............................................................................................................15
Considerations when implementing a RAID Solution ........................................................................................................15
Controller Features ................................................................................................................................................................................15
Capacity Requirements...........................................................................................................................................................................17
6. DELL OPENMANAGE SERVER ADMINISTRATOR ............................................................................................................. 19
Managing the PERC 5/E Controller and the PowerVault MD1000 Storage Enclosure..................................................19
Using the Create Virtual Disk Wizards ...............................................................................................................................19
Reconfiguring Virtual Disks -- RAID Migration and Capacity Expansion.......................................................................20
Moving Physical Disks and Virtual Disk Configurations – Disk Roaming and Disk Migration .....................................21
Importing Migrated Virtual Disks .......................................................................................................................................22
Upgrading from Dell OpenManage Array Manager .........................................................................................................24
7. STORAGE APPLICATIONS AND COMPONENTS..................................................................................................................25
Identify customer usage model and needs...........................................................................................................................25
Picking a solution based on the application profile............................................................................................................26
Application specific guidelines ............................................................................................................................................27
E-Mail Servers ........................................................................................................................................................................................27
Web Servers.............................................................................................................................................................................................28
Database or Online Transaction Processing Servers...........................................................................................................................29
File Servers..............................................................................................................................................................................................30
Streaming Media Servers........................................................................................................................................................................32
Hot Spares.............................................................................................................................................................................33
8. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................................33
9. APPENDIX – A: REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................35
10. APPENDIX – B: GLOSSARY...........................................................................................................................................35
11. APPENDIX – D: REVISION HISTORY.............................................................................................................................35