Developers Guide
33 Understanding RAID with Dell SC Series Storage | 3104-CD-DS
The following conditions are typical reasons that may alter a standard SC Series setup.
Site requirements for isolated disks: Multi-tenancy or other business requirements
High-write-bandwidth applications: Seismic recording, video recording, video editing, surveillance
For these types of applications, create a storage type with a set of disks to allow isolation of the applications,
increase or decrease availability, and provide predictive performance.
The storage type will isolate disks and setup redundancy, but will not necessarily bind a volume to a particular
disk type or RAID level. To further tune the applications, use a custom (or available) storage profile. For
example, a custom RAID 10, Tier 1 only storage profile would configure the volumes to use the new storage
type along with the storage profile that would isolate the disks to the volumes and force the RAID levels and
tiers selected.
Several storage profiles are available depending on the type of SC Series arrays in the configuration. The
following are the standard storage profiles for all SC Series arrays except the SCv2000.
Standard storage profiles available
Applications that require a continuous amount of large block writes, typical of seismic recording, video editing,
and surveillance, may follow a similar technique.
Design technique for high write applications:
Use unique disks for the application and create a storage type to isolate these volumes to the
appropriate disks.
Use an existing storage profile, such as low priority, to allow the volumes to only write to Tier 3 disks.
Use a custom storage profile to allow the volumes to only write to RAID 5/RAID6.
Using an existing storage profile: For this case, a dual redundant, low priority storage type would use only
RAID 10-DM and RAID 6 in Tier 3.
Using a custom storage profile: Create a custom storage profile allowing volumes to use all tiers and only
RAID 6. The volumes could then be created on the new storage type with the appropriate storage profile.
Dell recommends that the technical resources from the account team are involved in designing the SC Series
solutions to meet the needs of the business.