Dell PowerVault MD3200i Series Technical Manualbook

Also see for PowerVault MD3200i Series: Manual Update Rack Installation Instructions User guide Support Matrix

Contents

Dell PowerVault MD3200i Series Technical Manualbook Manual pdf 7 page image

DELL PowerVault MD3200i/MD3220i Technical Guide Book5Controller ArchitectureFigure 1. RAID controller architecture of the MD3200i controller.The RAID controllers are the “engines” or the “brains” of the MD3200i and MD3220i storage arrays.They perform the RAID calculations, control the I/O movement, communicate with the managementclient, store the firmware, and protect data until it can be written safely to the hard disk drives. TheMD3200i’s architecture is designed to excel in multi-host systems environments. Its I/O system coreprovides built-in hardware XOR for high-speed RAID parity calculations – enabling it to easily handlevery compute-intensive tasks. Each RAID controller contains 2GB of cache for a total of 4GB of cachein a dual controller configuration which is mirrored with the other controller’s cache for highavailability. In the event of a power failure, the controllers are protected with battery assistedpersistent cache backup which destages cache to non-volatile media for indefinite safe keeping.Each controller has a 36-port 6 Gb/s SAS expander that provides access to the drives in the MD3200i orMD3220i enclosure. The SAS expanders enable each controller to access all of the drive ports creatingactive/active drives loops that provide both controllers redundant access to all attached disk drives.SASExpSBB 2.0 Compliant Connector2GBDDR-II1Gb EthNICRJ45I2C32-lane 8-portPCI-E SwitchPCI-E PCI-EDDR-IIX4X24(Drives)X4X4(Alt Ctrl)BBUCache OffloadAssemblyPCI-ESDFPGAFlash16 Bit Parallel BusNVSRAMPCI-EPCI-EX4(Alt Ctrl)Flash800MHzPower PC6Gb SAS36 PortExpanderiSCSI TOERJ45 RJ45 RJ45 RJ45