Adaptec Series 6 Brief Manual

Adaptec Series 6 Brief Manual Manual pdf 1 page image

>Zero-Maintenance cache Protection BriefReduced Data Center Operating Costs and MaximumProtection for Cached DataHighlightsLow operating costs– No installation, monitoring,maintenance, disposal orreplacement costs due tobatteriesno Data Loss from Powerfailures– Replaces lithium ion batteriesMaintenance-free cached DataProtection– No need to monitor batterycharge level– No shutdown required forbattery replacement– Protects data indefinitely — noneed to rush to restart systems“before the battery runs out”– Stores protected data for yearsinstant raiD cache Protection– Charges in minutes instead ofhours– RAID performance optimizedimmediatelyenvironmentally conscious– No toxic battery disposal– Works in conjunction withAdaptec Intelligent PowerManagement for industry’s‘greenest’ solution- Simplified IATA complianceavailable fully integrated onSeries 5Z and Series 6Q raiDcontrollers and as an add-onkit for Series 6 raiD controllersIDC estimates that the cost of operating apiece of IT equipment over a four year periodmay be four times greater than the originalcost of acquiring it.Adaptec Series 6, Series 6Q with maxCache2.0 and Series 5Z RAID controllers withZero-Maintenance Cache Protection (ZMCP— pronounced “zemcap”) provide maximumprotection for cached data and eliminate thesubstantial costs and environmental impactof complex, messy and expensive Lithium Ionbatteries, while improving cache protectionand cache performance.Why do you need Cache Protection?The adoption of RAID 5 and 6 continues togrow in enterprise storage systems as userscontinue to be concerned about optimizingcapacity utilization for rapidly growing datasets. However, optimal performance can sufferunless the system is operated with all availablecaches enabled.With controller cache enabled, however, datais stored in the controller’s memory and can belost when a system power outage occurs. Themost common protection against this scenariois to backup the controller cache with a batterybackup unit (BBU) installed directly on thecontroller. This battery is used to maintainthe data of the on-board memory cache untilpower can be resupplied to the unit.A second use for the BBU is in connectionwith Adaptec’s Intelligent Power Managementwhich is offered on Adaptec Series 6, Series6Q, Series 5Z, Series 5 and Series 2 RAIDcontroller families. In order for the controllerto slow down or stop disk drives there mustbe no I/O activity to the disk. However, manyoperating systems do very low, but non-zero,levels of I/O all the time — even when allapplications are idle. The on-board memorycache on the Adaptec controllers can play animportant role in supporting IntelligentPower Management by absorbing theseI/O requests and saving them in memory,instead of spinning up disk drives that wouldotherwise be idle. Of course, this approach isonly fail-safe if the contents of the on-boardmemory are preserved across a power outage.Zero-Maintenance Cache ProtectionDespite their obvious value, BBUs (availablefor Series 5) are not the optimal solution:they must usually be purchased separatelyfrom the controller card, and require constantmonitoring, maintenance and replacement.Old batteries must be disposed of in anenvironmentally-responsible manner.Adaptec Series 6, Series 6Q with maxCache2.0 and Series 5Z controllers offer a differentapproach: Zero-Maintenance CacheProtection.The basic idea of ZMCP is to detect the lossof power to the controller and then to copythe data in the on-board controller cache tonon-volatile location — in this case NANDflash memory of a type similar to that usedin USB thumb drives and solid state disks.This process is supported by a super capacitorthat keeps the necessary parts of the controlleractive for the time required to perform theNAND flash copy.Once the data has been copied to the flashmemory the controller no longer needs powerin order to preserve the data.When power is finally returned to thecontroller, the data in the flash memoryare copied back to the on-board controllercache and operation resumes as normalwith all outstanding I/O requests preserved.>Zero-Maintenance Cache Protectionfor Series 6, Series 6Qand Series 5Z RAID Controllers

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