Dell PowerVault MD3000i User manual

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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.
© 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
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.