SAN FAQ
This section answers typical questions from customers concerning SAN (Storage Area Network).
D/E series in General
Connection with Hosts
Equipment Details
D/E series in General
1. What is the "NEC Storage D/E series?"
A: The D/E series products are disk arrays compatible with a SAN environment.
2. What are the features of the NEC Storage D/E series?
A: Please refer to the page introducing the D/E series products.
3. Please show us actual examples of NEC Storage D/E series implementations.
A: Some implementation examples of NEC Storage products are shown here.
Connection with Hosts
1. What are the platforms that can be connected?
A: HP-UX, Solaris Linux, or Windows OS platforms that are equipped with fibre channels can be connected. In connecting such platforms, some conditions have to be met. For more details, consult our sales offices or send an inquiry form. The form is here.
2. Can this system be connected to servers other than NEC's?
A: In connecting other platforms, some conditions have to be met. For more details, consult our sales offices or send an inquiry form. The form is here.
3. Please give us details about host interfaces.
A: The interface is a fibre channel with 400 MB/s transfer rate. The Arbitrated Loop, Point-to-Point, and Fabric topologies are supported.
4. How many connection ports are provided for connection to hosts?
A: It depends on the models. Please refer to the page introducing the D/E series products.
Equipment Details
1. What is the purpose of the cache memory? Is it actually required?
A: The cache memories are installed in order to improve response performance. Writing performance improvement by using write cache, memory data read (read cache function), and advance memory data reading (pre-fetch function) are the specific effects of these cache memories. The effectiveness of the cache depends on the type of data to be accessed.
Installation of more cache memories is recommended for a RAID-5 configuration in order to avoid possible performance degradation due to write penalties.
2. What RAID configurations are supported?
A: It depends on the models as shown below:
- S1500/S2500/S2900: RAID-0,1,5,10,50,6
- S4900: RAID-1,5,10,50,6
For more details, refer to the specifications of respective products.
3. What is the disk drive interface?
A: The interface is a fibre channel with 200 MB/s transfer rate.
4. What happens if some disk drives fail?
A: Failure of a single disk drive cannot cause an immediate system failure because of the redundant configuration employed. When hot spare disks are in place, data contained in a failed disk drive can be reconstructed in the spare disk for reducing the time duration of operating the system in a non-redundant condition. Also, the NEC Storage Manager can be used for monitoring the components of a disk array system. For further details, refer to the descriptions for the NEC Storage Manager.
