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ULTRATRAK100 TX4
AND
ULTRATRAK100 TX8
USER MANUAL
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COPYRIGHT © 2001, Promise Technology, Inc. Copyright by Promise Technology, Inc. (Promise Technology). No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the expressed, written permission of Promise Technology. TRADEMARKS Promise, and the Promise logo are registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. IMPORTANT DATA PROTECTION INFORMATION You
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RADIO FREQUENCY INTERFERENCE STATEMENT This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate radio frequency energy, and, if not installed and used in accordance with the instruction may cause harmful interference to radio communications. Howe
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................................................................................1 Architectural Description.........................................................................................1 Features and Benefits ............................................................................................2 Getting Started......................................................................................................
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Appendix A - Technology Background .......................................................................41 Introduction to RAID .............................................................................................41 RAID 0 – Striping..................................................................................................41 RAID 1 – Mirroring................................................................................................42 RAID 0+1 – Striping/Mirror ........
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INTRODUCTION Thank you for purchasing Promise Technology’s UltraTrak100 TX4 or UltraTrak100 TX8 external disk array system. UltraTrak100 provides data storage solutions for applications where fault tolerance and data redundancy are required. The failure of any single drive will not affect data integrity or accessibility of the data. A defective drive may be replaced without interruption of data availability to the host computer. A hot spare drive will automatically replace a failed drive,
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual FEATURES AND BENEFITS Feature Benefit Maximum fault tolerance Ensures uninterrupted data availability Supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, Allows system to be tuned for maximum performance 0+1, and JBOD Emulates standard SCSI-3 drive Compatible with all SCSI-3 or SCSI-2/LVD host adapters. to host No special operating system drivers used Supports asynchronous and Up to 80MB/sec data transfer rates on the SCSI Bus synchronous transfer mode T
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GETTING STARTED Caution To prevent serious damage to the UltraTrak100 be sure that the voltage- select switch on the back of the power supply is set to your local voltage (see Figure 2 on page 5). Getting started with the UltraTrak100 consist of the following steps: 1. Unpack UltraTrak100 storage subsystem (page 3). 2. Install Hard Drives (page 3) 3. Connecting the SCSI Cables (page 5). 4. Connect Power Cable and Switch Power On (page 7). 5. Assign a SCSI ID (page 7). 6. Configure th
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual Before installing a new hard drive, be sure the jumpers on the new hard drives are set for single or master operation. Consult the drive manual for the proper settings. Install new hard drives into the UltraTrak100 by doing the following: 1. Open the Front Panel Door on the UltraTrak100. 2. Unlock the Drive Carrier Latching Mechanism and remove an unused Drive Carrier (see Figure 1 on page 4) from the UltraTrak100. (Begin at the top an
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115 I O CONNECTING THE SCSI CABLES Installation of the UltraTrak100 disk array is very similar to the installation of a standard SCSI drive. The SCSI connector accepts the standard 68-pin LVD SCSI connector used on most LVD SCSI devices. Refer to your system and/or SCSI host adapter manual for additional installation procedures that may apply to your system or host adapter. COM-1 SCSI-IN SCSI Connector Input SCSI-OUT /TERM SCSI Connector Output/Terminator Power Switch Voltage Select Swit
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual (the one which is attached to the SCSI adapter) to the top connector, and place an LVD SCSI active terminator on the other connector. An LVD SCSI active terminator is included with UltraTrak100 disk array unit. • If the array is to be placed in the middle of a daisy-chained configuration, connect the incoming cable (the one which is attached to the SCSI adapter) to the top connector and connect the outgoing cable (the one which continues
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device has a unique SCSI ID and that only the first and last devices are terminated. (See SCSI Cable Connection and Termination on page 5). Terminator SCSI ID WIDE SCSI COM2 Another SCSI Device Computer or UltraTrak100 TX4 UltraTrak100 TX4 Workstation Figure 4. Daisy Chaining UltraTrak100 with Other SCSI Devices CONNECT POWER CABLE AND SWITCH POWER ON The UltraTrak100 TX4 disk array includes a single power supply; The UltraTrak100 TX8 includes two replaceable power supply modules. Both sy
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual CONFIGURE THE ULTRATRAK100 The configuration procedures for both the UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 are exactly the same. The following procedures provide the basic steps needed to create an array and get your UltraTrak100 running quickly. Before beginning, you need to decide if you will create an array using the automatic setup features or if you will create the array manually. Both procedures are provided, but you can only use on
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Note If you wish to make a RAID 0+1 array using 4, 6, or 8 drives you need to choose RAID 1 (mirroring) and then follow the steps below to create the array. 9. Press SEL to assign Stripe Block Size. 64KB is the optimum value for most applications. Choosing the proper Stripe Block Size facilitates efficient data flow. You might want to choose a different value if you know the size of the cache buffer in your hard drives or the average data block size of the data you retrieve. See C
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual For the Gigabyte Boundary feature to work, the Gigabyte Boundary feature must be set to ON when the original array is created. When enabled, the Gigabyte Boundary feature rounds the drive capacity of all drives to the common whole GB drive size. For example, with the Gigabyte Boundary feature enabled, the remaining working drives can be 20.5 GB and the replacement drive can be 20.3, since all are rounded down to 20GB. This permits the smal
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Recommended Applications for RAID 1 • Accounting • Payroll • Financial • Any application requiring very high availability RAID 3 Advantages Disadvantages High Read data transfer rate Parity drive can become bottleneck if a lot of writes are occurring Disk failure has an insignificant impact on throughput Recommended Applications for RAID 3 • Image Editing • Prepress Applications • Any application requiring high throughput RAID 5 Characteristics/Advantages Disadvantages
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual JBOD Characteristics/Advantages Disadvantages Uses 100% capacity of all hard drives The failure of just one drive will result in all data in an array being lost Should not be used in mission critical environments Recommended Applications for JBOD • File archiving • General fileserver HOT SPARE DRIVE(S) A good precaution to protecting your array integrity in the event of drive failure is maintaining a hot spare drive. A hot
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MAINTENANCE DRIVE STATUS INDICATORS As shown in the figure below, each drive has three status LEDs. Figure 5. Location of Drive Status Indicators (TX4 shown) MEANING OF STATUS INDICATORS Indicator Color Meaning Power Off No disk drive power – power off or no disk installed. Green Disk power on. Status Green Normal Amber Data is being rebuilt to this drive Red Failed Disk Off No drive installed or the drive has failed Green This will blink on and off to indicate disk activity
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UltraTrak100 TX4 and UltraTrak100 TX8 User Manual A non-fault tolerant array goes "offline" when a drive is removed or fails. Since the array is not fault tolerant, the data stored in the array is no longer accessible. If the drive was removed, then it should be replaced to restore accessibility to the array. If the drive failed, then the entire array must be deleted and re-initialized since all data is considered lost. REBUILDING/SYNCHRONIZING FAULT TOLERANT ARRAYS Though a critical ar
