Speichersysteme (engl.)

Storage infrastructure of the HPC-laboratory

Technological requirements for server systems at the institute are intelligent storage systems like storage area network (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS). They offer flexible platforms, which automate the main tasks of the data management (like e.g. backup and recovery).

DAS

Direct attached storage (DAS) is the traditional modality to integrate disk space into a system, viz. connect directly. Thereby the hard disks are connected directly to the local server or by host-bus-adapters. With today’s server systems mostly SCSI-technology is used to achieve certain flexibility. In some extent fiber-channel-connections are chosen, which are considered as direct attached if directly connected to single servers.

NAS with fibreCAT n40i and the disk pack SX80

Network attached storage (NAS) means storage systems which serve as network disk space in classical meaning and can be appropriate simple integrated in a network. Imagine connect and configure a box on a private IP-network (LAN). The appropriate hosts can afterwards instantly access the appropriate disk space via the network.

FibreCAT n40i + SX80

Operating system: Windows Storage Server 2003; connection to the servers via iSCSI protocol standard; feature pack for WSS2K3 (Exchange data on NAS)

Hard disks: 12x 146GB (SX 80)

Storage capacity: clear 0,8TB; gross 1,75TB

Features: print-service; point-in-time copies of the database by Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS); supports Windows (CIFS), UNIX/Linux (NFS), NetWare, HTTP, iSCSI and AppleTalk protocols

SAN with FAS 3020

A storage area network (SAN) is a network which exclusively contains storage systems. This storage system bases on fiber optics technology and allows very high transfer rates between host and disk space (up to 200MB/s). The fundamental idea of a SAN lies in the consolidation of disk space and reduction of management via the administrator.

FAS 3020

Model: FAS3020
Version: 7.2.3
Volumes:  21 Volumes
Aggregates: 1 Aggregate

Operation system: Network Appliance™ Data ONTAP™

Software-Features: FlexVol™, integrated automatic RAID manager, Snapshot™, Fast Boot, e-mail alerts, NIS, DNS, SNMP, FilerView®, NDMP, LDAP

Network protocols: Microsoft® CIFS, NFS V2/V3/V4 over UDP or TCP, HTTP 1.0, HTTP 1.1 virtual hosts, FTP

SAN protocols: FCP; iSCSI; fabric-attached and direct-attached

Licensed software: FlexClone™, MultiStore™, Clustered Failover, SnapMirror®, SnapRestore®, SnapDrive™, SnapManager® for Microsoft Exchange, SnapManager for Microsoft SQL Server,  SnapVault™, LockVault™, SnapLock™ Compliance, SnapLock™ Enterprise, SyncMirror™,   DataFabric® Manager

Hardware: Full-duplex 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet onboard, Fiber Channel ports onboard, Remote LAN Management Module (optional),(1)Built-in LVD SCSI Port, diagnostic LED/LCD, Compact Flash redundant hot-plug cooling fans, redundant hot-plug power supplies, 19" rack-mount enclosure

Possible RAID-groups:

• RAID-4 (Single Parity) - FC-Data/Parity: 7+1 (13+1); SATAData/ Parity: 7+1 (7+1)

• RAID-DP (Dual-parity) - FC-Data/Parity: 14+2 (26+2); SATAData/ Parity: 12+2 (14+2)

Used hard disks: 300GB FC x 56 units (8 Hot-Spare)