Dell PowerVault MD3000i User manual

www.dell.com | support.dell.com

Dell™ PowerVault™

MD3000i RAID Enclosure

Hardware Owner’s Manual

Notes, Notices, and Cautions

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of

your computer.

NOTICE: A NOTICE indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data

and tells you how to avoid the problem.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury,

or death.

____________________

Information in this document is subject to change without notice.

Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly

forbidden.

Trademarks used in this text: Dell, the DELL logo, PowerEdge, and PowerVault are trademarks of

Dell Inc.; Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, and MS-DOS are either trademarks or registered

trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries; UNIX is a registered

trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming

the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and

trade names other than its own.

Model AMP01

June 2007 Rev. A00

Contents 3

Contents

1 About Your System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Enclosure Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Modular Disk Storage Manager . . . . . . . . . . 11

Other Information You May Need . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Connection Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

About the Enclosure Connections . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Hardware Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Indicators on the Enclosure Bezel . . . . . . . . . 13

Front-Panel Indicators and Features . . . . . . . 14

Back-Panel Indicators and Features . . . . . . . 18

RAID Controller Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Cache Functions and Features . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Power Supply and Cooling Fan Features . . . . . 24

2 Using Your RAID Enclosure . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Physical Disks, Virtual Disks, and Disk Groups . . . . 27

Physical Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Physical Disk States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting

Technology (SMART) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Virtual Disks and Disk Groups . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4Contents

Supported RAID Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

RAID 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

RAID 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

RAID 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

RAID 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

RAID Level Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Segment Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Hot Spares and Rebuild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Global Hot Spares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Hot Spare Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Rebuild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Media Errors and Unreadable Sectors . . . . . . . . . 34

RAID Operations and Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Virtual Disk Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Disk Group Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

RAID Background Operations Priority . . . . . . . 39

Virtual Disk Migration and Disk Roaming . . . . . 40

Advanced Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Storage Partitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Host Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Snapshot Virtual Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Snapshot Repository Virtual Disk . . . . . . . . . 45

Virtual Disk Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Volume Shadow-Copy Service . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Virtual Disk Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Using Snapshot and Disk Copy Together . . . . . . 48

Hardware Redundancy and Failover . . . . . . . . . . 48

Redundancy and Non-Redundancy . . . . . . . . 49

Multi-Path Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Contents 5

When a RAID Controller Module Is Replaced

or Removed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

RAID Controller Failover Modes . . . . . . . . . . 51

Thermal Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Updating Enclosure Firmware . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

RAID Controller Module Firmware . . . . . . . . . 52

Physical Disk Firmware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Expansion Enclosure Firmware . . . . . . . . . . 53

Best Practices and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . 54

3 Installing Enclosure Components . . . . . . 55

Recommended Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Removing and Replacing the Front Bezel . . . . . . . . 55

Removing and Installing Physical Disks . . . . . . . . 56

Removing Physical Disks from the Enclosure . . . 57

Installing SAS Physical Disks in the

Enclosure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Removing and Installing a RAID Controller

Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Removing a RAID Controller Module . . . . . . . 60

Installing a RAID Controller Module . . . . . . . . 61

Removing and Installing a RAID Controller

Module Backup Battery Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Removing and Installing the Power Supply/Cooling

Fan Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Removing a Power Supply/Cooling

Fan Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Installing a Power Supply/Cooling

Fan Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

6Contents

Removing and Installing the Control Panel . . . . . . . 66

Removing the Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Installing the Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Removing and Installing the Midplane . . . . . . . . . 68

4 Troubleshooting Your Enclosure . . . . . . . 71

Safety First—For You and Your Enclosure . . . . . . . 71

Start-Up Routine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Troubleshooting External Connections . . . . . . . . . 72

Troubleshooting a Wet Enclosure . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Troubleshooting a Damaged Enclosure . . . . . . . . . 73

Troubleshooting Power Supplies . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Troubleshooting Enclosure Cooling Problems . . . . . 75

Troubleshooting a Fan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Troubleshooting SAS Physical Disks . . . . . . . . . . 76

Troubleshooting Enclosure Connections . . . . . . . . 77

Hard Controller Failures and Lockdown

Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Invalid Enclosure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

ECC Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

PCI Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Critical Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Noncritical Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Contents 7

5 Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Obtaining Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Technical Support and Customer Service . . . . . 82

Online Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Automated Order-Status Service . . . . . . . . . 83

Dell Enterprise Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Problems With Your Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Product Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Returning Items for Warranty Repair or Credit . . . . . 83

Before You Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Contacting Dell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

8Contents

About Your System 9

About Your System

The Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000i is a 3U rack-mounted external Redundant

Array of Independent Disks (RAID) storage array 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

enclosures, 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 a standard Ethernet connection, and communication between

the two is established through an iSCSI initiator.

Overview

The RAID enclosure is designed for high availability, offering redundant

access to data storage. It features support for both single RAID controller

configuration and dual RAID controller configuration. For each

configuration, up to 16 hosts can be connected through industry-standard

1-Gb network interface cards (NICs).

The MD3000i storage array provides dual active/active RAID controller

modules, redundant power supplies, and redundant fans. The RAID

enclosure is designed for high-performance environments: eight-node clusters

or multi-host storage access for up to 16 host servers.

Storage management can be either in-band through the iSCSI connection, or

out-of-band using an Ethernet connection to the Management Port on the

RAID controller modules.

Enclosure Features

Features include:

• Support for up to 16 Microsoft Windows

or Linux host servers

• 3U chassis for rack mounting

• RAID controller modules in two supported configurations:

– Single-controller configurations

– Dual-controller configurations for high availability

10 About Your System

• 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 per disk group

• Up to 2 TB (2036 GB) storage on a single virtual disk

• Support for up to two PowerVault MD1000 expansion enclosures through

SAS Out port connectors on the RAID controller modules

• Online firmware updates (without taking the enclosure offline) for the

following components:

– RAID controller modules

–NVSRAM

– Physical disk

NOTE: Dell recommends stopping all I/O to the array when downloading

physical disk firmware.

– Expansion enclosure management modules (EMMs)

• Task-based configuration software (MD Storage Manager)

• Optional snapshot virtual disk (premium feature), up to four snapshots per

virtual disk and 128 snapshots per array

• Optional virtual disk copy (premium feature), up to 255 virtual disk copies

per array

• Continuous background event monitoring for critical problems, such as

impending physical disk failure or failed RAID controller modules

• Host-based, multipath failover software for redundant configurations to

automatically reroute I/O activity from a failed, offline, or removed RAID

controller module to its alternate RAID controller module (or from a failed

iSCSI connection). This capability maintains a data path between the host

server and the

storage array.

Other manuals for PowerVault MD3000i

Table of contents

Other Dell Enclosure manuals

Dell

Dell Storage Center SC200 User manual

Dell

Dell External M1000e t User manual

Dell

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000 Manual

Dell

Dell E11J User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault 114T Owner's manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD3000 Quick guide

Dell

Dell SC460 User manual

Dell

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000 User manual

Dell

Dell PowerEdge FX2 User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault E03J Series User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD3200 Series User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault 114x User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD3060e Series Service manual

Dell

Dell EMC ME4 Series User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD3000 Technical manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD3000 Technical manual

Dell

Dell Compellent SC280 User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD1000 Technical manual

Dell

Dell DAE2-ATA Application guide

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD1120 User manual

Dell

Dell Compellent SC280 User manual

Dell

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000 Quick start guide

Dell

Dell SCv300 User manual

Dell

Dell PowerVault MD3060e Series Quick reference guide

Popular Enclosure manuals by other brands

SilentiumPC

SilentiumPC Armis AR5 Hardware installation

Pulsar

Pulsar 17/TRP80/DSPR Assembly instructions

Thermaltake

Thermaltake V150 TG user manual

MSI

MSI MPG SEKIRA 500X quick start guide

Antec

Antec Dark fleet DF-10 user manual

Nexans

Nexans WTC05 installation manual

Peavey

Peavey DS 1502 Specifications

D-Link

D-Link ShareCenter Pro DNS-1550-04 user manual

Rosewill

Rosewill RX82-U(JBOD) user manual

QNAP

QNAP SAS JBOD CLI 1.0 user guide

GAMDIAS

GAMDIAS Talos P1 Quick installation guide

Auvs

Auvs KR615 user manual

Digitus

Digitus DA-71114 manual

CommScope

CommScope FDH 3000 user manual

FS FHD-FWME4 quick start guide

JBL

JBL CS1215T owner's manual

Pulsar

Pulsar ARAD-S4 manual

Pulsar

Pulsar AWO454 Assembly instruction