Business Continuance Foundations Review

Identify IDE and SCSI concepts as they relate to currently shipping PowerEdge and PowerVault Systems.

• IDE/ATA is an interface that is commonly found on desktop systems but is being used in PowerEdge and PowerVault systems.
  • Throughput rates up to 100MB/sec
  • Two devices per channel
  • Devices designated master or slave
• SCSI is most commonly found in servers and storage. It is more scaleable than IDE/ATA.
  • Throughput rates up to 160MB/sec
  • Up to 16 devices per channel
  • Longer cable lengths making it suitable for external devices
  • Uses unique SCSI IDs

Identify Fibre Channel and its key concepts

• Fibre Channel is an interface that is combined with SCSI to provide a scaleable, high-performance storage interface that surpassed SCSI in many ways.
  • Sustained throughput rates of 200MB/sec
  • Up to 16 million devices in a switched fabric topology
  • Cable lengths of 10km or greater
  • Fiber optic cabling can be used

Differentiate between direct attached storage, network attached storage, and storage area network.

• Direct attached storage connects hard drive expansion direct to a server using either SCSI or Fibre Channel.
  • Most typical way for storage expansion.
• Network attached storage is an appliance that connects directly to a network. It is best used for consolidated file sharing for multi-platform environments.
  • Windows, NetWare, Apple, and Unix clients can be consolidated to NAS appliances.
  • Quickly adds storage expansion.
• Storage Area networks are dedicated networks of storage devices. Fibre Channel is exclusively used to provide a highly scaleable environment.
  • SANs can be configured with no single points of failure
  • Zones can be created to logically isolate or group systems
  • Devices can be added or removed without rebooting
  • Systems backups no longer occur on the main LAN freeing up network bandwidth

Identify the benefits of RAID and the RAID levels typically used on PowerEdge and PowerVault systems.

• Redundant Array of Independent Disks provides data redundancy by either duplicating data or by adding parity information.
• RAID is broken down in to levels each having its own requirements, benefits, and drawbacks.
• Combined RAID levels improve the fault tolerance, speed, or both of single RAID levels. They are more expensive in terms of the number of disks required.

Identify the purpose of PERC, its benefits, and key functions

• The PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller is a SCSI-based RAID card.
• PERCs contain their own processors and memory which frees up the system process to do other tasks.
• Single or combined RAID levels can be configured

Identify the purpose of the Dell OpenManage Array Manager, its benefits, and functions

• The Dell OpenManage Array Manager is a consistent way to manage storage subsystems.
  • Array Manager supports the PERC 2, 2/SC, 2/DC, 2/Si, 3/DCLite, 3/DC, 3/QC, 3/Si, 3/Di, and the PowerVault 660F Fibre Channel RAID controller.
• Array Manager consists of three main components, the console, server, and the providers.
  • Console - the management interface for Array Manager
  • Server - common repository for storage objects
  • Providers - similar to a driver the console provides management functions for a hardware device or software component

Identify media types, capacities, and suggested backup applications for current PowerVault tape backup solutions

• Dell's PowerVault tape backup products are available from workgroups to the enterprise.
  • Travan and DDS drives are suitable for workgroups systems
  • DLT and LTO drives are suitable for departmental systems
  • Tape libraries and autoloaders are available for enterprise and SAN environments
• PowerSuite software is the perfect complement to the PowerVault tape backup units.
  • PowerSuite provides advanced features like over-the-wire backups, advanced scheduling, tape management, and disaster recovery options.

Distinguish the various PowerVault systems.

• Dell's storage products are called PowerVault. Use the chart below for quick reference to the PowerVault series.