Ultra3 SCSI to SCSI
External RAID Controller
Overview
The NS-RC 150F is designed for today's demanding
I/O applications with advanced RAID operations featuring
four Ultra3 SCSI channels. Its exceptionally high performance
derives from the combination of a 64-bit RISC PowerPC
750 CPU and Infortrend's sophisticated RAID ASIC. I/Os
are rapidly processed and distributed to array hard drives.
Data is transferred between the host and the drives via
a high-speed 64-bit data path at a burst rate of 1056MB/second.
The result is a controller which excels in applications
that require both high sustained data rates and fast I/O
turnaround.
High Flexibility
Each SCSI channel can be defined as either a drive channel
or a host channel. This allows users to connect multiple
host systems through independent channels. Background
firmware download and automated rolling upgrade (in redundant
mode) are also supported.
High Data Availability
With a multitude of RAID functions, the NS-RC 150F gives
users both the highest data availability and security.
NS-RC's capabilities include: automatic drive
failure detection, background rebuilding, and bad sector
reassignment. When the controller detects a hard drive
failure in a RAID 1, 3, or 5 logical drive, the disk
array will instantly replace the failed disk with a
hot-spare drive. Data is reconstructed into the hot-spare
drive, while the host remains uninterrupted. In the
absence of a hot-spare drive, users can hot-replace
the failed drive with a new one and initiate an automatic
rebuild.
Advanced Configuration Options
RAID level stripe size is configurable on a per logical
drive basis. Caching mode is automatically switched
to a conservative state upon the discovery of critical
conditions.
Active-Active Redundancy
The controller supports active-active redundancy and
the controller failover/failback is totally transparent
to host. Array workload can be flexibly assigned to
either controller on a per logical unit basis while
cached data is constantly synchronized over the dedicated
communications channel. Different caching mode optimization
applies to different logical drives for the best adaptation
to I/O characteristics.
Bad Sector Management
NS-RC detects bad sectors on SCSI drives during
disk reads or writes. It will recover the data from
parity fault and perform bad sector reassignments.
A manual Scrub function helps to discover media errors
on drives. Data is then safely reconstructed onto the
healthy sectors.
Battery Backup
Infortrend's battery backup option protects write-back
cache data from sudden power interruptions. If system
power is lost before the controller completes a cache
write flush operation, the battery supplies auxiliary
power (see specifications for details) to the controller's
DRAM until system power is restored and the write cache
is flushed.
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