Partners SurfRAID TRITON Mini, User Manual

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Introduction
1-1
Chapter 1
Introduction
The SurfRAID TRITON Mini is an Ultra 320 LVD SCSI-to-Serial ATA II RAID
(Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) disk array. It consists of a RAID
disk array controller and four (4) disk trays.
The SurfRAID TRITON Mini is “Host Independent” supporting RAID levels 0,
1, 3, 5, 0+1 and JBOD. Regardless of the RAID level that the SurfRAID TRI-
TON Mini is configured for, each RAID array consists of a set of disks which
to the user appears to be a single large disk capacity.
One unique feature of these RAID levels is that data is spread across sepa-
rate disks as a result of the redundant manner in which data is stored in a
RAID array. If a disk in the RAID array fails, the SurfRAID TRITON Mini con-
tinues to function without any risk of data loss. This is because redundant
information is stored separately from the data. The redundant information can
be used to reconstruct any data that was stored on a failed disk. In other
words, the SurfRAID TRITON Mini can tolerate the failure of a drive without
losing data while operating independently of each other.
The SurfRAID TRITON Mini is also equipped with an environment controller
which is capable of accurately monitoring the internal environment, such as
its power supplies, fans, temperatures and voltages. Its modular design al-
lows hot-swapping of hard drives without interrupting the SurfRAID TRITON
Mini’s operation.