Chapter 1. Introduction; Overview; Sas Defined - IBM System Storage DCS3700 Installation, User's, And Maintenance Manual

Chapter 1. Introduction

This chapter describes the operating specifications, features, and components for the IBM System Storage
DCS3700 storage system and DCS3700 expansion unit.
This chapter also includes an inventory checklist and important information on best practices guidelines
and product updates for your DCS3700.

Overview

The DCS3700 is designed to meet the storage needs of the highly scalable, data streaming applications in
high performance computing environments. The storage subsystem offers you data access and protection
to meet your existing high performance computing storage requirements and prepare for the future.
The DCS3700 is designed to provide solutions to meet the needs of midrange storage requirements,
delivering high performance, advanced function, high availability, modular and scalable storage capacity,
with SAN-attached 6 Gbps Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity, and
support for RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, and 6.
Note:
1. RAID 6 uses a P+Q design implementation.
2. When RAID level 1 is implemented and the number of drives increases to more than two,
RAID level 10 is automatically implemented.
The DCS3700 Storage Subsystem supports attachment of the DCS3700 expansion enclosure. The DCS3700
supports configurations of SAS and Near-Line SAS disks, or a mix of these types of disk drives. For
details on the maximum number of disk drives supported, maximum storage capacity, and other features
of the storage subsystem, see "DCS3700 Features" on page 3.
The DCS3700 is a 4U rack-mountable storage enclosure that supports up to two redundant, dual-active
RAID storage controllers or environmental service modules, depending on the model. The DCS3700
storage system RAID controllers come standard with two 6 Gbps x4 SAS host interface ports and a single
6 Gbps x4 SAS expansion port on the base controller. In addition, each controller has an additional slot
that supports the installation of an optional Host Interface Card (HIC). The supported host interface cards
are a four-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) adapter or a two-port 6 Gbps SAS adapter. Either host
interface card can be used in conjunction with the base SAS host interface; however, each controller must
have the same type of host interface card installed.
Advanced DCS3700 storage management, copy service options, and optional advanced disaster recovery
functions are available, including FlashCopy
Storage Manager client is also available for the DSC3700 Storage Subsystem. This storage management
software is designed to help centralize storage management, help simplify partitioning of the DCS3700
series storage into as many as 128 virtual servers, and strategically allocate storage capacity to maximize
storage space.

SAS defined

The Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a point-to-point serial architecture that replaces the parallel SCSI bus
technology but still retains usage of the standard SCSI command set. The SAS point-to-point architecture
provides a dedicated, full-duplex channel, that can transfer data at 6 Gbps in each direction. The Serial
SCSI Protocol (SSP) is used to support SAS-only drives.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2011
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, VolumeCopy, and Enhanced Remote Mirroring. The DS
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