About Your System 7
About Your System
The Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000 is a 3U rack-mounted external Redundant Array of Independent
Disks (RAID) enclosure capable of accommodating up to 15 3.0-Gbps, Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS)
disks. The RAID enclosure can be daisy-chained with up to two additional MD1000 expansion units,
providing access to a maximum of 45 disks in the entire storage array. Connectivity between the
RAID enclosure and the host server is provided by Dell SAS 5/E Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).
Overview
The RAID enclosure is designed for high availability, offering redundant access to data storage. It
features dual active/active RAID controller modules, redundant power supplies, and redundant fans.
The RAID enclosure is designed for high-performance environments: two-node clusters or multi-
host storage access for up to four servers.
Storage management can be either in-band through the SAS connection, or out-of-band using an
Ethernet connection.
NOTE: Dell recommends that you configure your MD3000 to use both in-band and out-of-band management
paths. Establishing all management connections to a RAID enclosure provides additional paths in the case of
a management connection failure.
Enclosure Features
Features include:
• Direct-connect support for fully redundant, two-node Microsoft
®
Windows
®
Clusters
• Support for up to four Windows, SUSE
®
, or Red Hat
®
Linux
®
host servers
• U chassis for rack mounting
• Two redundant, hot-pluggable RAID controller modules in one of two supported configurations:
– Dual RAID controller modules with single SAS In port connectors on each controller
– Dual RAID controller modules with dual SAS In port connectors on each controller
• Two redundant, hot-pluggable power supply/fan modules
• 512 MB of mirrored cache on each RAID controller module
• Battery backup unit in each RAID controller module that protects against cache data loss for up to
72 hours
• Support for up to 45 3.5" SAS physical disks
• Support for up to 255 virtual disks
