Dell PowerVault 720N, Command Reference Manual, Page: 49 / 606

Introducing Dell Filers 1-1
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A filer is a hardware and software system. It acts on network requests from clients
and processes them by writing data to or retrieving data from disks in PowerVault
700N Disk-Array Enclosure (DAE) storage systems that are connected to it. The soft-
ware that enables the filer to perform these tasks is the Data ONTAP™ 5.3 operating
system.
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A filer consists of the following major components listed in Table 1-1.
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Often, the filer main unit is referred to simply as a filer.
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A filer provides the features described in Table 1-2.
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Filer main unit The piece of hardware that receives and sends
data.
PowerVault
700N storage
systems
Hardware that holds disks and is connected to
the filer.
Data ONTAP
5.3
Software that is the operating system for the
filer.