Coraid Etherdrive Srx Series; Interoperability And Resiliency Testing; Figure 2 - Coraid Etherdrive Srx Storage Array - Avaya VSP 7000 Technical Configuration Manual

1.2 Coraid EtherDrive SRX Series

Coraid is redefining the fundamental economics of storage with Ethernet SAN solutions that provide
enterprises of all sizes with a flexible tier of high-performance, scale-out storage. The Coraid EtherDrive
SRX Series storage arrays deliver performance up to 1,800 MB/sec, with multiple 10 GbE connections
per shelf, providing a 5-8x price performance advantage over other SAN storage solutions. EtherDrive
SRX scales to multiple petabytes, uniquely delivering the fundamental building blocks necessary to build
the next generation SAN infrastructure for a range of applications including server virtualization, high-
performance computing, and cloud storage.
Coraid uses RAID technology as a method of logically treating several hard drives as one unit to improve
performance and/or provide redundancy. The Coraid EtherDrive SRX-Series storage appliances support
all standard RAID types (0, 1, 5, 6, and 10). The Coraid EtherDrive SRX-Series appliances are block
storage RAID devices with front loading, hot-swappable SATA, SAS, and SSD disk drives. Each
EtherDrive SRX appliance can be used individually or in RAID sets.

1.3 Interoperability and Resiliency Testing

The Avaya / Coraid solution testing focused primarily on verifying interoperability and resiliency simulating
various fault conditions to ensure high availability. During interoperability testing, the Avaya VSP 7000
communicated with two Coraid EtherDrive SRX-Series storage appliances.
The Coraid EtherDrive SRX-Series uses the ATA over Ethernet (AoE) protocol to communicate between
the logical storage devices and servers across a standard Ethernet network. AoE enables you to share
disk drives through a standard Ethernet network. AoE arranges the communication that would normally
take place between a server and a disk drive into data packets called datagrams and sends these across
Layer 2 Ethernet with minimal overhead. Datagrams are addressed to storage devices using their
Ethernet MAC addresses.
AoE does not run over high level networking protocols like IP so AoE datagrams cannot be routed. The
data packets can travel across the switches that make up an Ethernet LAN, but routers cannot send them
to another network and devices outside of the LAN cannot communicate with them. This provides an
inherent layer of security. AoE is designed to run on a datagram networking protocol such as Ethernet,
which makes a best effort attempt to deliver datagrams. AoE has developed a sophisticated congestion
avoidance algorithm to maximize throughput while avoiding dropped frames. AoE can quickly recover
from lost datagrams on the network due to congestion so it is guaranteed to not lose data.
For technical support, access to documentation, frequently asked questions, AoE tools for Linux, and
contact telephone numbers on Coraid EtherDrive SRX-Series storage appliances, contact Coraid's
technical support at their Web site: http://www.coraid.com/support/customer_support.
August 2011
Figure 2 – Coraid EtherDrive SRX Storage Array
Avaya VSP 7000 with Coraid EtherDrive SRX-Series
Storage Appliances TCG
avaya.com
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