GRASS VALLEY K2 BASECAMP EXPRESS, Installation And Service Manual

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This is because the Nearline system has no media database to support “movies” or “clips”, such as
there is on an “online” K2 SAN. However, the files on a Nearline system can be readily available
to an online K2 system via FTP transfer.
The redundant Nearline SAN has two Ethernet switches, connected by Inter-Switch Links (ISLs)
to support a redundant Ethernet fabric.
The SAN also has two 10 Gig NH K2 Media Servers. The NH server for a Nearline system has two
ports for Fibre Channel connections. NH servers do not have media (iSCSI) ports.
A NH server on a Nearline system is configured with roles of FTP server and Media file system
server. On a redundant system these roles are identical on both servers and provide redundancy as
follows:
• FTP server — Both servers are active in this role simultaneously. To provide FTP redundancy
in the event of a server failure, your facility’s FTP system must be able to access alternate FTP
servers.
• Media file system server — Only one server is active at any one time in this role, and the media
file system provides redundancy. If a fault occurs on the active server, one of the other servers
automatically takes over as the active media file system server.
In the Nearline system no K2 Media Servers take the role of iSCSI bridge or media database server.
No K2 clients or any other generic client are part of the Nearline system.
7.2K SAS drives provide the media file storage on a Nearline system. While these drives do not
provide the high bandwidth of the drives required by an online K2 SAN, they offer larger capacity
and lower cost. This makes these drives ideal for the Nearline SAN.
The primary RAID chassis has two controllers. The primary RAID chassis is connected via Fibre
Channel to the NH server. These Fibre Channel connections access the disks simultaneously for
redundancy and increased bandwidth. Each controller in the RAID chassis is also connected to the
GigE control network, which is required for SNMP (NetCentral) monitoring.
There must be one primary RAID chassis and may be up to eleven optional Expansion chassis.
Primary chassis and Expansion chassis contain twelve drives. All disks in both primary and optional
Expansion chassis are bound as RAID 6.
The K2Config control point PC is connected to the GigE control network. The K2Config application
runs on this PC for configuring the SAN. The SiteConfig application also runs on this PC.
Related Topics
Description of K2 SAN Devices on page 257
Working with Ethernet switches on page 333
02 February 2012 K2 SAN Installation and Service Manual 37
Product description