Chapter 1 — System Overview
18
User Guide
90990030
O
VERVIEW
The nTier500 provides high density network-attached storage for most
major operating environments, including Microsoft
®
Windows
®
, UNIX
®
,
and Linux
®
. The server has its own dedicated disk storage, which makes it
possible to install and run software applications, including backup
software, directly on the nTier500.
Optimized for secondary storage and pre-configured with a single
NTFS-formatted RAID 6 NAS volume, the highly versatile nTier500 has
many applications, including use as:
Network-Attached Storage (NAS) for sharing file-based information
over an IP network.
High-speed disk storage for media serving.
A disk-to-disk data backup device, either alone or as part of a tiered
storage solution.
When used as a part of a tiered storage solution, the nTier500 can be
connected to a tape library for long-term data archival and disaster
recovery. Data from primary disk storage on the host is first backed up to
the nTier500. From there, the backup software on the nTier500 can be used
to migrate the files to tape for archiving and off-site storage.
F
EATURES
The energy-efficient nTier500 includes the following features:
RAID-protected data and system disks
The nTier500 includes up to sixteen
high-performance disk drives mounted on individual drive sleds. The
drives provide the appliance’s RAID-protected storage capacity and are
preconfigured as a single NTFS-formatted RAID 6 NAS volume.
Two dedicated disk drives protected by RAID 1 mirroring to provide the
dedicated storage for the operating system and any additional software
installed on the appliance.
RAID write caching
Cache memory on the system’s RAID controller stores
data from the host before it is written to the disk drives. Because writing
data to memory is typically faster than writing to disk, using write caching
improves the overall performance of the RAID storage. Once the data is
written to the cache memory, the host can move on to another operation
while the data is written to disk.
Integrated application server
The powerful, integrated server uses two
high-performance CPUs to run the Windows Storage Server operating
system and additional installed software. See
Integrated Application
Server on page 22
for detailed information.
Summary of Contents for nTier500
Page 1: ...SpectraLogic com Spectra nTier500 Backup and Archive Appliance User Guide ...
Page 6: ...Contacting Spectra Logic 6 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 12: ...Contents 12 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 52: ...Chapter 2 Installing the nTier500 52 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 64: ...Chapter 3 Using the BlueScale Web Interface 64 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 82: ...Chapter 4 Configuring the nTier500 82 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 112: ...Chapter 6 Configuring Logical Volumes 112 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 160: ...Appendix A Service and Support 160 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 166: ...Appendix B Specifications 166 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
Page 176: ...Appendix D Tuning Gigabit Ethernet Network Performance 176 User Guide 90990030 Notes ...
