Product Overview
1-1
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Product
Overview
1.1.1 Product Introduction
This chapter briefly introduces the Galaxy (GAL) RAID Fibre-to-SAS
(Serial Attached SCSI) subsystem. With compatible interface connectors,
the drive bays also support SATA-II (Serial ATA) disk drives. The 16-bay
model comes with up to four (4) 4Gb/s host channels and sixteen (16) hot-
swappable SAS/ SATA disk drives in a 3U chassis. The subsystem is
powered by Infortrend’s
proprietary ASIC400 RAID
engine, which features
expanded bandwidth and
RAID6 configurations. The
RAID controller comes
with a pre-installed
memory buffer of up to 2GB in size for transient handling of I/Os. Each
4Gb/s channel is capable of delivering data at the speed of 400MB/s. An
onboard hub (bypass) can be used to connect the corresponding FC
channels on partner controllers together to facilitate fault-tolerant
connections. A common backplane provides fault-tolerant data paths across
dual-ported SAS disk drives (over two separate SAS domains).
The subsystem is ideal for high performance and high availability storage
applications, and is highly scalable via a 4x multi-lane SAS expansion port.
Terabytes of expansion capacity can be added via the SAS 4-PHY SFF-
8470 expansion links to expansion enclosures.
Data cached in memory is protected by a Li-Ion battery backup unit (BBU)
that comes with an embedded EEPROM for storing BBU service data. If the
one-year life expectancy of a BBU is reached, system administrators will be
notified by event messages. The BBU is independently accessible and hot-
replaceable.
Two (2) cooling modules protect the subsystem from overheating, and two
(2) hot-swappable power supply unit (PSU) modules ensure constant power
Figure 1-1: Galaxy RAID Subsystem