Hard Disk Management - 360 Systems MAXX-1200-HD Operation Manual

Hard Disk Management

The MAXX-1200 employs an advanced Serial-ATA controller that manages four high-capacity
hard disks operating in a RAID-5 configuration. This design increases system performance, and
by storing parity data helps prevent data loss should a drive fail.
The server brings a high level of reliability to Serial-ATA RAID through a switched architecture
that exceeds the reliability of SCSI shared-bus storage systems. The earlier shared-bus
architecture of SCSI has inherent performance limitations due to arbitration latency, since only
one drive may use the bus at a time. Further, a single drive failure can bring the entire storage
system down.
By contrast, the server uses a non-blocking switched architecture to isolate the drives from one
another. Any drive failure makes that drive unavailable and the rest of the storage system
remains undisturbed. In addition, the server uses Advanced Data Protection features, where all
drive commands are checked to ensure that no command corruption has taken place over the
entire data path.
Some of the MAXX-1200 RAID implementation features and benefits include:
•
Non-blocking switch technology with RAID 5 parity
•
On-board processor minimizes host CPU overhead
•
Easy-to-configure arrays
•
Dynamic sector repair for robust data protection
•
Accelerated RAID-5 writes
•
Easy drive replacement from front panel
Page 100 MAXX-1200 Owner's Manual