About The Sc9000; Storage System Overview; Sc9000 Hardware - Dell SC9000 Owner's Manual

About the SC9000

The SC9000 is an enterprise-class storage system that provides performance, scalability and high
availability.

Storage System Overview

The storage system described in this document consists of two storage controllers, enterprise-class
switches, and one or more expansion enclosures.

SC9000 Hardware

The storage controllers provide the central processing capability for the Storage Center Operating
System, application software (Dell Storage Client), and management of RAID storage.
Each storage controller includes two Intel Xeon CPUs, a cache card, an Integrated Dell Remote Access
Controller 8 (iDRAC8), a four‐port Intel network daughter card, and up to six IO cards installed in three
full‐height slots and three low‐profile slots. The Storage Center Operating System is installed on an
embedded SSD within each storage controller.
The IO cards in the storage controller are designated as front-end ports or back-end ports.
• Front‐end ports: Hosts, servers, or Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances access storage by
connecting to the storage controller iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or FCoE IO cards through one or more
network switches. The ports for these connections are located on the back of the storage controller,
but are designated as front‐end ports.
• Back‐end ports: Expansion enclosures, which hold the physical disks that provide back‐end storage,
connect directly to the SAS ports on the storage controllers. The SAS ports are designated as back‐
end ports, which are part of a private network between the storage controllers and expansion
enclosures.
About the SC9000
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