Dell EqualLogic PS400E iSCSI Storage SAN

The Dell EqualLogic PS400E storage array is a 10.5TB – 28TB system with 14x 750GB, 1TB, or 2TB SATA drives in a 3U enclosure.

The PS400E iSCSI SAN is a complete system configured with dual controllers, dual power supplies, dual fans, a universal rail kit, and power cords.

PS400E Dell EqualLogic Storage Array Specifications

• VOLUMESUP TO 1,024
• SNAPSHOTS512 PER VOLUME / UP TO 10,000 TOTAL
• HOST INTERFACEANY STANDARDS-COMPLIANT ISCSI INITIATOR
• SYSTEM CAPACITY10.5TB – 28TB
• IOPS960
• MAXIMUM DRIVE QUANTITY14 – SATA
• SYSTEM MEMORY2GB
• NETWORK INTERFACES3 X 1GB
• SUSTAINED SYSTEM BANDWIDTHUP TO 300 MBPS
• RAID SUPPORTAUTOMATIC RAID 5, RAID 10 AND RAID 50 CONFIGURATION

 Dell EqualLogic PS400E Storage Array Overview

With the Dell EqualLogic PS Series of storage arrays, Dell provides a storage solution that delivers the benefits of consolidated networked storage in a self-managing, iSCSI storage area network (SAN) that is affordable and easy to use, regardless of scale. By eliminating complex tasks and enabling fast and flexible storage provisioning, these solutions dramatically reduce the costs of storage acquisition and ongoing operations.

PS Series Storage SANs provide a peer storage architecture comprised of one or more independent arrays. Each array contains its own controllers, cache, storage, and interface ports. Grouped together they can create one or more single instance storage pools that are based on the IETF iSCSI standard. The capabilities of the PS Series solution are provided through a unique set of software and hardware capabilities that, when used cooperatively, can provide a full featured SAN solution. The following sections provide additional insight into specifications and functions of PS Series arrays.

The Dell EqualLogic PS400E array is ideal for virtualization and business applications where capacity, performance and low cost are all equally important. The PS400E, ideal for small-to-medium iSCSI protocols, provides outstanding value with a low TCO, improved chassis design, more memory, advanced data protection and a high performance option. The series is built on advanced peer storage architecture and features perpetual self-optimization with automated load balancing across disks, RAID sets, connections cache and controllers. Whether you need to improve productivity, performance and capacity or streamline your IT infrastructure with unified block and file storage, the Dell EqualLogic PS400E delivers powerful, intelligent and simplified management with enterprise scalability — and without the need for fork-lift upgrades. Enhance the value of your small data center or remote office and meet constantly changing workloads with the Dell EqualLogic PS400E storage array. EqualLogic makes data storage systems that radically simplify the way mid-size and large businesses store and protect information. EqualLogic’s award-winning PS Series storage area network (SAN) solution provides sophisticated management capabilities that reduce the time and money IT staff spend on storage.

Dell EqualLogic PS400E Controller Redundancy

The EqualLogic PS400E can be configured with either a single controller, or dual redundant controllers. The single controller configuration will provide the same level of I/O performance as a dual controller configuration. The dual controller configuration provides for redundancy. Redundant controllers will prevent volume connections between hosts and SAN from being dropped in the event of an active controller failure.

The Active Controller is the controller which is processing all disk and network I/O operations for the array. A second controller in dual controller configurations will always be in a “passive” operating mode. In this mode, the secondary controller will exhibit the following characteristics:

• Each of its Ethernet ports are electrically inactive (active lights are off)
• The passive controller cache mirrors the cache of the active controller

Dell EqualLogic PS400E Controller Failover

To support redundant controller fail over, each Ethernet port on the active controller that is connected to the EqualLogic PS400E SAN must have its corresponding port on the passive controller also connected to the same SAN network. In the event of a controller failure, the passive controller will immediately activate and continue to process all data requests to the array. The following changes occur during fail over:

• The backup controller automatically enables each of the corresponding Ethernet ports that were enabled on the failed primary controller
• The IP addresses that were assigned to each of the failed controller Ethernet ports are reassigned to the corresponding ports on the second controller

A link failure on one or more of the Ethernet ports on the active controller does not constitute a controller failure. For this reason, it is important to ensure that ports from each controller are connected to at least two different switches. This will prevent a switch failure from also disabling all paths between a host and its connected volumes.

Dell EqualLogic PS400E Data Services

• Auto-Replication
• Automatic Load Balancing
• Auto-Snapshot Manager
• Auto-Stat Disk Monitoring System
• Volume Consistency Sets
• Multi-Path I/O
• PS Group Manager
• Pooled and Tiered Storage
• RAID Load Balancing
• Snapshot and Auto-Replication Scheduler
• E-mail Home
• Roles-based Administration
• Storage Virtualization
• Thin Provisioning
• Volume Cloning
• Volume Management
• Volume Snapshot