PowerVault MD3000i SAN Disk Arrays

Frequently Asked Questions About the Dell PowerVault MD3000i

The PowerVault MD3000i is a storage area network, or SAN for short. It provides businesses and organizations with a central storage area through the iSCSI standard, or Internet Small Computer Systems Interface, without the need for any expensive infrastructure. Finding the right storage solution can be difficult, but with the help of eBay, the buying and selling process is easier.

The PowerVault MD3000i can house up to 15 total disk drives out of the box. If you add the optional expansion enclosures, you could potentially store a total of 90 TB of space over 45 disk drives, including both SATA and SAS. These drives are hot-pluggable and support varying levels of data bandwidth. The fastest drive, SAS-4, has a maximum data bandwidth of 22.5 gigabits per second. The PowerVault MD3000i can connect with up to two hosts directly or up to 16 redundant hosts when configured with an Ethernet switch.

The PowerVault MD3000i is equipped with the following features:

• Drive failure detection:This device can rebuild an entire failed drive with a hot-spare drive.
• Multi-host management:IT professionals can manage an entire network from one console.
• LED indicators:This device has LED indicators for system status, power, the status of each drive, power supply or fan faults, SAS in/out ports, Ethernet link and speed, and more.
• RAID levels:This device supports multiple RAID levels, including 0,1, 5, and 6, for varying degrees of data redundancies, parity, and mirroring.
• Data protection:Both the Snapshot and Virtual Disk Copy features create a copy of data at a single point in time to make relocation, backup, and recovery easier.
• Hot-plugging:You can replace not only disk drives but also power supplies, cooling fans, and storage controllers while the system is still operational.

There are two models available: the standard model and the high availability model. Whereas the standard model connects up to two hosts directly, the high availability model can connect up to four hosts directly, although both support the same 16 redundant hosts. The standard model has a single controller with 512 MB of battery-packed cache, while the the high availability model has two active controllers with 1 GB of battery-backed cache. If one controller fails, then the other controller can handle the full processing load.