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Chapter 2 – Overview & Hardware
Overview
The Facilis TX16 is a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage enclosure featuring
expansion capabilities for a TerraBlock 24D or fully populated TerraBlock 24EX. The
TX16 SAS interface supports up to 32 Terabytes (TB) of disk storage designed for
Post Production and Content Creation applications. The TX16 product is supported as
direct attached server on Windows®, Linux and Macintosh operating systems out of
the box. TerraBlock expansion is supported with Windows® 7 64Bit version.
Features
The Facilis TX16 SAS storage enclosure is a sixteen-drive array supporting RAID
Level SATA drives. The TX16 ships with 4 and 8 Terabyte (TB) capacity drives and
provides capacity up to 128 Terabytes (TB) of expandable or raw storage in a single
enclosure.
TerraBlock Expansion Storage
The TX16 is also designed to be expansion or “add-on” storage to an existing
TerraBlock 24D or fully populated TerraBlock 24EX.
The Facilis TX16 SAS chassis is connected via the ATTO SAS H680 Host Bus Adapter
(HBA) controller board. Once installed, the TerraBlock server active drive set is
expanded to include the TX16.
Once attached to the TerraBlock server, the TX16 will be seen as usable storage via
the TerraBlock Managers user interface. Virtual volumes can be created with raid
protection using the TerraBlock servers DynaRaid functionality (see TerraBlock User
Guide for creating and managing virtual volumes).
Direct Attached
The TX16 can also be used as direct attached client storage. It comes “turn-key”
pre-configured for direct attached use. The RAID set has already been built with
factory presets. Some client configuration is required.
The ATTO Configuration Tool allows both easy configuration and access to detailed
operational information about the Facilis TX16 SAS.
The Facilis TX16 SAS is powered by the ATTO SAS RAID R680 Host Bus Adapter
(HBA) controller board. Once installed in your Windows, Macintosh, or Linux
workstation in a PCI Express (PCIe®) slot, the RAID controller board provides SAS
connectivity and RAID functionality.
The Facilis TX16 SAS storage is pre-configured RAID level 5 out of the box. RAID
level 6 is supported as well, but will require recreating the RAID set (see Appendix
A). In a Facilis TX16 SAS storage 16-drive system, if a drive fails, the TX16 storage
can automatically begin the rebuild process once a new drive is installed into the
enclosure.
