Overview: HP StorageWorks P9000 disk array

BANGALORE, INDIA: Hewlett-Packard extended its family of StorageWorks XP disk arrays with an addition, HP StorageWorks P9000 disk array. Pricing for the HP StorageWorks P9500 starts at $250,000.

P9500 Hardware

The P9500 hardware consists of one or two DKC racks that will hold up to 256 drives each. Each DKC rack can attach to one or two optional DKU racks that each holds up to 384 drives.

Also Read: HP expands storage portfolio

The DKC Rack contains the Controller Chassis and two 128 slot Drive Chassis. The DKU Racks contain up to three 128 slot Drive Chassis.

Channel Adapter (CHA) Pairs

Channel Adapters (CHA) pairs provide connections to host or servers that use the P9500 for data storage (either directly connected to the servers or through SAN switches).

CHA pairs also provide connections to External Storage devices and to remote replication devices. CHAs are configured in pairs for redundancy.

A minimum of 1 CHA pair is required. The maximum number of CHA pairs that can be

installed in one DKC rack depends on the number of DKAs installed:

Max 4 CHA pair with 2 DKA pairs installed

Max 5 CHA pair with 1 DKA pair installed

CHA pairs available for use in the P9500 include:

Fibre Channel-8 port 2-8 Gbps auto sensing Fibre Channel.

Fibre Channel-16 port 2-8 Gbps auto sensing Fibre Channel.

FICON-16 port 1-4 Gigabit/sec auto sensing FICON short wave.

FICON-16 port 1-4 Gigabit/sec auto sensing FICON long wave.

FICON-16 port 2-8 Gigabit/sec auto sensing FICON short wave.

FICON-16 port 2-8 Gigabit/sec auto sensing FICON long wave.

The Fibre Channel CHA pair uses SFP (small form factor pluggable) Transceivers on each port of the

CHA. Each port is configurable as short wave or long wave by installing the appropriate transceiver.

These CHA pairs ship with 8-Gbps short wave transceivers installed on every port.

Disk Adapter (DKA) Sets The Disk Adapter (DKA) performs all data movement between the drives and Cache Memory.

The DKA also provides data protection using RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 6.

The P9500 can have one, two or DKA pairs installed.

{#PageBreak#}

Cache Memory

Cache Memory is used to temporarily store data from the host until it is written to drive storage, or to stage data requested by the host from a drive.

The P9500 contains global mirrored cache. All write data is written in cache twice, one time each on two separate SSD backed up Cache Memory Adapters.

This insures that even if one cache board fails that the data is still in the other one until it is safely written a drive. Read data is not mirrored as a copy of that data remains on the drives, allowing more of the total cache capacity available for data.

P9500 Cache Memory can be configured into partitions allocated to particular host/port combinations to ensure that those hosts/ports enjoy optimized performance of cache-oriented I/O. These cache partitions are assigned to specified disk array groups.

Up to 32 partitions of at least 4GB can be created in a P9500. Assigning cache in this way provides another method for tuning performance for data access for performance critical applications.

Drives

The P9500 supports a variety of 2.5" small form-factor hard disk drives and solid state drives (SSDs). The number and type of drives installed in a P9500 is flexible. Disk drives must be added in groups of four.

Additional capacity can be installed over time as capacity needs grow. All P9500 drives use the industry standard dual ported SAS interface.

Each drive is connected to both blades of the redundant DKA pair by separate connections.

Spare drives are automatically used in the event of a drive failure.

Source: HP