Dell PowerVault 221S Optimizing Dell SCSI Solutions - Page 2

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ SCSI SOLUTIONS VER A02 TABLE OF CONTENTS A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL SCSI SOLUTIONS 3 1. INTRODUCTION ...3 2. STORAGE APPLICATIONS AND COMPONENTS...4 Identify customer usage model and needs ...4 Picking a solution based on the application profile 4 General RAID Configuration Guidelines ...5 Application specific guidelines...6 E-Mail Servers...6 Database Servers ...7 Web Servers...8 Online Transaction Processing Servers...9 File Servers...10 Streaming Media Servers...12 Additional configuration factors...13 Hot Spares ...13 Clustering Considerations...13 Considerations for Optimal RAID Performance...13 3. DELL'S PRODUCT OFFERING...14 PowerVault™ 220S & 221S Storage Enclosure 14 PERC - PowerEdge™ RAID Controllers ...14 SCSI Cabling...15 SCSI Hard Drive Support...16 3rd Party Hardware support...16 Server Support ...16 4. PV22XS ENCLOSURE OVERVIEW ...19 Joined Bus Topology ...19 Split Bus Topology...20 Cluster Topology ...21 PV22xS - Common Features and Capabilities 22 SCSI ID Assignment...22 Multiple PV22xS Enclosures on a Single Host System ...23 Mixing EMM Speeds...23 Mixing HDD Capacities ...24 Mixing HDD Spindle Speeds...24 SCSI Enclosure Services (SES) ...24 Warm and Hot Pluggable Features ...24 External SCSI Cables...25 External SCSI Connector Types...25 PV22xS Configuration Topology and Application Attributes 26 5. SCSI HOST BUS ADAPTERS / SCSI RAID...29 RAID: Hardware Vs Software ...29 Considerations to Implement a RAID Solution 29 Controller Family...30 Data Protection Strategy ...32 High Availability Needs - Clustering...33 Heterogeneous vs. Homogeneous environments...33 Interface Channel Options - Internal/External/Multi channel device configuration 34 Capacity Needs - Virtual Disk Size...35 Additional RAID information...35 6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ...39 7. APPENDIX - A: REFERENCES...41 8. APPENDIX - B: GLOSSARY ...42 9. APPENDIX - C: ABOUT THE DELL SCSI STORAGE SOLUTION TEAM 43 Authors ...43 10. APPENDIX - D: REVISION HISTORY...44 PAGE 2 11/17/2005