Built for high-performance 2-node clusters or direct attachment up to four PowerEdge servers, the PowerVault MD3000 is a modular disk storage array capable of housing up to fifteen 3.5-inch SAS or SATA disk drives in a single 3U rack enclosure. The PowerVault MD3000 is expandable by simply adding up to two additional expansion enclosures for a total of 45 drives and 90TB of capacity. The entire array subsystem is managed from a single software application-known as the Modular Disk Storage Manager-which streamlines the management and maintenance of storage as it scales. With the PowerVault MD3000, storage can be quickly and easily added as needed without disruption to operations.
The Dell PowerVault MD3000 direct attached array is loaded with data-protection features to help keep your application up and running. The storage array is architected to avoid single points of failure.
External RAID storage arrays are designed to increase cluster performance & functionality
Raid controllers reside in the external storage array, enabling direct communication between them
Cache coherency is maintained through direct mirroring. Both controllers contain both sets of cached data.
Allows users to protect their data without having to sacrifice the performance benefits of caching.
Redundant components: Supports redundant active/active RAID controllers, management ports and power/cooling to provide real security at the hardware level. Automated drive failure detection: Capable of automatically rebuilding a failed drive using an available hot-spare drive. Intelligent battery monitoring: Intelligent software notifies you before the battery fails, helping to reduce unplanned downtime. Hot-pluggable components: Remove and replace disk drives, storage controllers, power supplies, and cooling fan modules while the system remains running - without impacting operations. RAID Levels: Supporting RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 5 and 6 offering flexibility in data protection and system performance characteristics. Premium management functionality: Snapshot and virtual-disk copy capabilities that support hourly, real-time backups of your entire data environment.
Simple Yet Powerful Storage Management
The MD3000 direct attached storage array delivers a seamless suite of intuitive task-based management capabilities. The Modular Disk Storage Manager can help automatically configure the system for optimal performance and availability.
Multi-host Management: Flexibility to manage the entire network from a single console.
Recovery Guru: A support tool that can help diagnose system problems and help determine an appropriate recovery procedure.
For advanced availability, the PowerVaultTM MD3000 disk storage array offers optional backup and data protection features; Snapshot and Virtual Disk Copy (VDC).
Snapshots are point in time copies of the data, so if a file is accidentally altered of deleted it can be recovered easily by reverting to a previous state. Snapshots can be taken instantaneously, minimizing application downtime.
Virtual Disk Copy (VDC) is a full, replicated copy of a source data taken at a discrete point in time, enabling quick and seamless virtual disk relocation, and disk based backup and recovery.
The PowerVaultTM MD family enables organizations to mix SAS and SATA drives delivering excellent flexibility to align data requirements with drive capabilities, speed, capacity and cost, to help optimize your storage environment.
SAS for Performance
SAS can deliver the speed, performance and reliability to satisfy mainstream single server applications. SAS performance makes it ideal for demanding server applications such as email or database applications that store active and frequently changing information.
NEW Nearline SAS - Performance of SAS, Capacities of SATA
The new 7.2K RPM SAS drives leverage the performance efficiencies of SAS making it ideal for customer who are looking for the low cost per GB but can't sacrifice performance. In everyday usage situations customers can see up to a 30% performance increase with the 7.2 RPM SAS drive over the 7.2 RPM SATA drives.
SATA for Capacity
SATA disk drives deliver a compelling cost-per-Gigabyte alternative to SAS. SATA drives are ideal high capacity applications where data is accessed and modified less frequently, such as digital imaging, file archiving, audio/video storage, or back-up to disk applications.
NEW Energy Efficient SATA -
The new 5.4K RPM SATA drive offers customers a high capacity, energy efficient alternative to traditional SATA drives. Ideal for capacity intensive applications in a power constrained environments. This 5.4K RPM SATA drive can reduce power consumption up to 30% with less than a10% degradation in random I/O performance over some 7.2K RPM SATA drives.
Active RAID Controllers
RAID controllers are the brains that govern everything that occurs within the PowerVault MD3000 storage enclosure, performing necessary calculations, controlling I/O performance operations, handling communication with management applications, and storing firmware. The PowerVault MD3000 was designed to incorporate twin active/active RAID controllers with mirrored cache for high-availability. If one controller should fail, the surviving controller can handle the full processing load until its mate is brought back online.
Dell's PowerVault MD3000 storage array allows you to remove and replace redundant components without disruption to operation. In the rare event of component failure, disk drives, storage controllers, power supplies, and cooling fan modules are all hot-pluggable - you can remove and replace them for easy repair while the system remains up and running. The PowerVault MD3000 enclosure contains two integrated power supply and fan modules - if one is removed the other can handle the demand, virtually eliminating downtime to your storage array.
If a physical disk should fail in the PowerVault MD3000 storage array, the lost data can be automatically reconstructed onto a hot spare drive using redundant data found on the surviving disks. When the failed disk is removed, a new physical drive can be inserted in its place, the data from the hot spare is automatically copied back to the replacement physical disk that might fall
