User guide

LSI Corporation
- 5 -
Syncro CS 9286-8e Solution User Guide
March 2013
Chapter 1: Introduction
HA-DAS Terminology
1.2 HA-DAS Terminology
This section defines some additional important HA-DAS terms.
 Cache Mirror: A cache coherency term describing the duplication of write-back cached data across two
controllers.
 Exclusive Access: A host access policy in which a VD is only exposed to, and accessed by, a single specified server.
 Failover: The process in which the management of drive groups and VDs transitions from one controller to the
peer controller to maintain data access and availability.
 HA Domain: A type of storage domain that consists of a set of HA controllers, cables, shared disk resources, and
storage media.
 Peer Controller: A relative term to describe the HA controller in the HA domain that acts as the failover controller.
 Server/Controller Node: A processing entity composed of a single host processor unit or multiple host processor
units that is characterized by having a single instance of a host operating system.
 Server Storage Cluster: An HA storage topology in which a common pool of storage devices is shared by two
computer nodes through dedicated Syncro CS 9286-8e controllers.
 Shared Access: A host access policy in which a VD is exposed to, and can be accessed by, all servers in the HA
domain.
 Virtual Drive (VD): A storage unit created by a RAID controller from one or more physical drives. Although a
virtual drive can consist of multiple drives, it is seen by the operating system as a single drive. Depending on the
RAID level used, the virtual drive might retain redundant data in case of a drive failure.
1.3 Syncro CS 9286-8e Solution Features
The Syncro CS 9286-8e solution supports the following HA features.
 Server storage cluster topology, enabled by the following supported operating systems:
— Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2
— Microsoft Windows Server 2012
 Clustering/HA services support:
— Microsoft failover clustering
 Dual-active HA with shared storage
 Controller-to-controller intercommunication over SAS
 Write-back cache coherency
 CacheCade 1.0 (Read)
 Shared and exclusive VD I/O access policies
 Operating system boot from the controller (exclusive access)
 Controller hardware and property mismatch detection, handling, and reporting
 Global hot spare support for all volumes in the HA domain
 Planned and unplanned failover modes
 CacheVault™ provides cache cached data protection in case of host power loss or server failure
 Full MegaRAID® features, with the following exceptions.
— T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF) is not supported.
— Self-encrypting drives (SED) and full disk encryption (FDE) are not supported.
— CacheCade 2.0 (write back) is not supported.
— Dimmer switch is not supported.
— SGPIO sideband signaling for enclosure management is not supported.