©
Copyright IBM Corp. 2000
1
Chapter 1. Getting started
Thank you for purchasing an IBM
®
Netfinity
®
FAStT product. Netfinity FAStT
(Fibre Array Storage Technology) solutions are designed to support the large and growing
data storage requirements of business-critical applications. These scalable Netfinity
FAStT solutions offer you data access and protection to meet your existing enterprise
storage requirements and prepare for the future.
The Netfinity FAStT500 RAID Controller Enclosure Unit (referred to throughout this
book as controller unit) is a high-performance unit that provides dual, redundant
controllers with Fibre Channel interfaces to both the host and drive channels. The
controller unit has redundant cooling, redundant power, and battery backup of the
controller cache.
Designed to provide maximum host and drive side redundancy, the controller unit
supports direct attachment of up to four hosts containing two host adapters each. Using
external managed hubs and switches in conjunction with the RAID controller unit, you
can build even larger configurations. (Throughout this book, the use of hub or external hub
refers to a managed hub.)
Fibre Channel is a new technology, similar to a high-speed network, that you can use to
connect large amounts of disk storage to a server or cluster of servers. Fibre Channel
technology supports increased performance, scalability, availability, and distance for
attaching storage subsystems to network servers. The controller unit provides for the
attachment of Fibre Channel disk drives to give superior performance and redundancy.
Fibre Channel technology supports applications that require large amounts of disk storage
shared by two or more servers. With Fibre Channel, you can see a higher throughput rate
over longer distances than is possible with small computer system interface (SCSI) or with
Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) technology.
This chapter provides descriptions of the primary components of the controller unit and
contains setup instructions. The controller unit is used with rack-mounted drive enclosures
(also referred to as expansion units) for Fibre Channel.
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