HP Raid Software for OpenVMS, Version 3.0A

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Software

Product

Description

PRODUCT NAME: HP RAID Software for OpenVMS, SPD 46.49.12

Version 3.0A

DESCRIPTION

HP RAID Software for OpenVMS is a layered software

product that uses RAID technology to manage groups of

disk drives as arrays. The product supports RAID Level

0 arrays (Disk striping) for enhanced I/O performance

and RAID Level 5 arrays (Disk striping with parity) for

enhanced data availability on VAX, Alpha, and I64 plat-

forms. RAID Software also allows partitioning or seg-

mentation of a RAID array into multiple virtual devices.

RAID Software for OpenVMS Capabilities and

Features

RAID Software manages groups of between 1 and 32

physical disks (between 3 and 32 for RAID Level 5) as

arrays. Applications use a virtual disk as if it were a

physical disk.

A maximum of 50 such arrays per OpenVMS cluster are

supported, in any mixture of RAID Level 0 and RAID

Level 5.

RAID virtual disks may be accessed directly from any

member of a OpenVMS cluster for which a valid license

is in effect. (All VMScluster systems may access virtual

disks created using the Storage Concurrent Use license

QL-0MGAA-3B.) Virtual disks may not be MSCP served.

The disks in a RAID level 5 array may be of different

types, although disks of a single type are recommended

for consistent performance and optimal use of storage

capacity.

RAID Software virtual disks may not be used to boot the

OpenVMS Operating System, nor may they serve as

OpenVMS cluster quorum disks. They may, however,

contain OpenVMS page and swap ﬁles.

RAID Software may be used in conjunction with Open-

VMS Volume Shadowing. OpenVMS shadow sets may

be used as RAID array members for RAID Level 0 ar-

rays to form RAID Level 0+1 arrays. However, virtual

disks may not be members of OpenVMS shadow sets.

A RAID Level 0 array whose members are shadow sets

is a high performance, high data availability storage so-

lution for most applications. RAID array members can

be spread across controllers.

Partitioning is the process of dividing a RAID array into

one or more RAID virtual devices. The RAID Software

allows you to specify how many partitions are to be

used in a given RAID array and how large each partition

should be. One or more partitions can be created on a

single-member RAID Level 0 array or multiple-member

RAID Level 0 or RAID Level 5 arrays. The maximum

number of partitions for any array is 64. The maximum

size of one array is 1 TB.

Features Applicable to RAID Level 0 Arrays

The usable capacity of RAID Level 0 array is approxi-

mately given by:

Usable Capacity = N * 0.99 * CS

Where N is the number of physical disks in the array.

CS is the storage capacity of the smallest disk in the

array.

The purpose of RAID Level 0 technology is to provide

I/O intensive applications with greater I/O performance

from a given I/O hardware conﬁguration than would nor-

mally be achieved by using the disks as individual vol-

umes. This is also referred to as Disk Striping. Depend-

ing on the application, enhanced I/O performance may

be delivered as:

June 2006

Summary of content (4 pages)

PAGE 1
Software Product Description PRODUCT NAME: HP RAID Software for OpenVMS, Version 3.0A DESCRIPTION HP RAID Software for OpenVMS is a layered software product that uses RAID technology to manage groups of disk drives as arrays. The product supports RAID Level 0 arrays (Disk striping) for enhanced I/O performance and RAID Level 5 arrays (Disk striping with parity) for enhanced data availability on VAX, Alpha, and I64 platforms.
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HP RAID Software for OpenVMS, Version 3.0A SPD 46.49.12 • more I/O requests serviced per unit time due to probabilistic load balancing, or virtual disk units created by RAID Software can be initialized as FILES-11 ODS2 or ODS5 or any other volume structure. • higher data transfer rate due to concurrent transfer of data to or from more than one disk to satisfy a single request. Each virtual disk created by RAID Software is a single management entity.
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HP RAID Software for OpenVMS, Version 3.0A SPD 46.49.12 In order to bind RAID arrays, all physical disks that comprise the RAID arrays must be accessible, (local or MSCP served), on all nodes in an OpenVMS cluster having the RAID software running. Table 1 Supporting Device Drivers Device Drivers If RAID Level 0 arrays with OpenVMS shadow sets as members are required, a valid OpenVMS Volume Shadowing license must be in effect on every OpenVMS cluster node running the RAID Software.
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HP RAID Software for OpenVMS, Version 3.0A SPD 46.49.12 SOFTWARE WARRANTY For purposes of the Storage Concurrent Use License, the measure of use is equal to a single disk, storage element, or shadow set to be included in an array, no matter how many OpenVMS cluster CPUs have access to that array. Each shadow set used as a member of a RAID Level 0 array requires a single Concurrent Use License, regardless of the number of physical disks in the shadow set.