DAC-FF
The Ultimate Fibre-to-Fibre Channel External RAID
Controller Solution for High Performance Servers, Clusters,
and Storage Area Networks (SAN)
DAC-FF - Technology
100MHz RISC Processor
256MB ECC Cache
2 Fibre Channels to Host
PP250299.ppt
4 Fibre Channels to Drives
3
Technology
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Fibre Technology
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Guaranteed Performance
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Dedicated XOR/ Cache controller
Up to 256 MB ECC protected User Data Cache
Burst Cache Transfer rate: over 190 MB/s
Proven system architecture
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PP250299.ppt
Fibre Channel Host connectivity
Data Transfer rates of 100MB/s per channel over a 30 Meter
serial link
Distances of several kilometers via Fibre Hubs and switches
Fibre Channel Drive connectivity
4 Channels for up to 500 drives; storage: 25.0 Terabytes
RISC processor -- 100 MHz i960RN
Common Management software
4
Architecture
FC
IOP
FC
IOP
PCI Bus 0
32 - 256 MB
SDRAM
North Bay
i960 RISC
Processor
16 MB DRAM
PCI Bus 1
FC
IOP
PP250299.ppt
FC
IOP
FC
IOP
FC
IOP
5
Hardware
DAC-FF:
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RISC Processors (i960RN
100MHz)
Firmware: 2MB Flash
EEPROM
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Up to 256 MB ECC Data Cache
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Dual 64 bit PCI Bus design
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5 1/4” form factor
PP250299.ppt
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2 Copper FC-AL host channels
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Burst cache transfer rates: Over
190 MB/s
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4 Fibre Channel drive channels
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Up to 125 devices per Fibre
channel - 500 devices per
controller
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Up to 25.0TB (Seagate 50GB
drives) capacity per controller
6
Board
RISC Processors (i960RN)
256 MB ECC cache
XOR engine
2 FC-AL channels
( to Host)
DACFF
4 FC-AL channels
( to Drives)
PP250299.ppt
7
DAC-FF Features
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RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 50 and JBOD
Write Through and Write back or read-ahead support
Active/Active ----- Failover/Failback for High Availability
Variable Stripe size per controller
Variable Cache Line size per controller
Mirrored Cache for Data Integrity
Clustering Support
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PP250299.ppt
Windows NT, UNIX, SCO UNIX,
NetWare
Designed to fit in an Industry standard 5 1/4” half-height
form factor
8
Advanced RAID Features
DAC-FF
 Fault Tolerance:
PP250299.ppt
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Automatic detection of Failed drives
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Automatic and transparent re-build of replacement drive
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On-line RAID expansion
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Hot Spare drive support
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Hot Drive Swapping support
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SAF-TE and SES enclosure management
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RAID configuration stored on disk and NVRAM
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Add a LUN; Expand a LUN
9
Simplex Performance and Capacity
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Performance
SX
Burst IO’s Per Second
Burst (cache) Bandwidth (MB/s)
Sustained (disk) Bandwidth (MB/s)
1,800
45
30
SF
FL
4,100
97
52
4,100
97
52
FF
5,800
190
190
Note: Sequential read performance, small blocks, no coalescing driver.
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Storage
Disks
Terabytes (9 GB)
Terabytes (18 GB)
* Single host channel
PP250299.ppt
SX
SF
FL
FF
75*
7
1.4
90
.8
1.6
60
.5
1.0
500**
4.5
9.0
** Single ported disks
10
Performance
DAC-FF
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Sustained transfers to Disk
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190MB/s
150MB/s
Burst Cache Transfer rates
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PP250299.ppt
RAID 5 Reads
RAID 5 Writes
Reads
Writes
190MB/s
190MB/s
11
Global Array Manager™ (GAM)
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Network Security Levels
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Online capacity expansion
Remote Instrumentation
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PP250299.ppt
Guest Access
Admin Access
DMI
SNMP
SMART Support
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Wizard Configuration
Flash upgradable F/W
OS-Independent Server
API
Performance Monitoring
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Controller Statistics
Drive Statistics
Historical Statistics
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Benefits
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Unparalleled Performance
RISC Processors--i960RN 100MHz
 Fibre Channel to host interface at 100MB/s per channel
 Fibre Channel to drive interface at 100MB/s per channel
 Mylex Firmware + Software
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Flexible Storage & Fault Tolerance
Feature rich RAID
 NT and Unix Clustering
 Storage Area Networks (SAN)
 Mirrored Cache
 RAID expansion (M.O.R.E.™1)
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Configuration & Remote Management
Global Array Manager™ (GAM)
 Client Server GUI
 Create, Manage, Expand and Monitor
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PP250299.ppt
13
Target Applications
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Designed for $30K to $200K servers
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Designed for Clusters
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PP250299.ppt
Departmental to Enterprise NT Servers
Low-end to Mid-Range UNIX Systems
3,000 to 30,000 IO’s per second
10’s of GB’s to 10’s of TB’s
NT (Microsoft Cluster Server), NetWare ORION and
UNIX clusters
Support for Storage Area Networks (SAN)
Active / Active Duplex Configurations
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Concurrently operation
--> performance
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Transparent failover / failback --> non-stop operation
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Mirrored cache architecture
--> guaranteed data integrity
14
Active /Active -- Fibre Interconnect
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Concurrent I/O Services from single or multiple servers to dual
controllers increase performance
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Controller failover requires dual host ports
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Fibre silicon does not support multiple port addresses
Active
Reserved
Controller 0
PP250299.ppt
Active
Reserved
Controller 1
15
Failover -- Fibre Interconnect
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With multiple host ports, when a controller
fails failover is initiated
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Reserved port of the surviving controller
assumes port ID of the active port on the
failed controller
Active
Reserved
Controller 0
PP250299.ppt
Active
Reserved
Controller 1
16
Failback -- Fibre Interconnect
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When the failed controller is replaced, port ID from the
reserved port on the surviving controller is
transparently returned to the active port on the new
controller
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Active / Active operation is resumed
Active
Reserved
Controller 0
PP250299.ppt
Active
Reserved
Controller 1
17
Scaleable Fault Tolerant Configurations
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC Hub
Active
Reserved
Controller 0
PP250299.ppt
Active
Reserved
Controller 1
Active Reserved
Active Reserved
Controller 2
Controller 3
18
Wolfpack-II Parallel Application
Computing
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
Reserved
Active
Reserved
FC Switch
Active
Reserved
Controller 0
PP250299.ppt
Active
Reserved
Controller 1
Active
Controller 2
Controller 3
19
Parallel App Clusters - Wolfpack-II
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N-Node, Switched Fibre, N-FF’s Arrays, FCAL
to Disk
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
Port 0
Active
Port 1
Active
FF Controller 0
PP250299.ppt
FC HBA
FC Switch
Port 0
Active
Port 1
Active
FF Controller 1
Port 0
Active
Port 1
Active
FF Controller 0
Port 0
Active
Port 1
Active
FF Controller 1
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