Clariion - Architecture

Architecture

The Clariion is built on an Intel platform and has quite unique software layer: it runs two operating environments in parallel. Windows XP Embedded or stripped-down version of Windows Server for management and maintenance tasks and proprietary UNIX-based FLARE as an actual "data mover". Embedded Windows (in the fourth generation this is 64-bit Windows Storage Server, the third generation used 32-bit Windows XP). The form factor is a half-width 1U or 2U device known as an X-blade, two of which are mounted side by side in the storage processor enclosure. This provides a fully redundant active-active configuration, with both storage processors serving requests and each acting as failover for the other so that initiators see the array as active-passive. An integrated UPS provides security for data in the event of power failure.

Storage is fibre-attached, initiators may be fibre- or IP-attached, the architecture supports both on the same array depending on configuration. Storage is connected via back-end loops with up to 120 drives per loop, the drives are contained in Disk Array Enclosures (DAEs) of 15 drives each.

The operating environment, FLARE (Fibre Logic Array Runtime Environment), resides on the first five disks of the first DAE (bus 0 enclosure 0), which is also supplied by the integrated UPS. In the event of power failure, this space is also used to store the contents of the write cache so that all writes are completed on restoration of power.

Management of the Clariion is usually through inbuilt Java-based management software called Navisphere.

With the fourth generation UltraFlex series, I/O is provided through pluggable modules providing either IP or fibre connectivity, allowing additional back-end and front-end connections to be added over the life of the array.

Advanced functionality of the Clariion is licensed and enabled through software. This includes SAN replication, Quality of service (QOS) and snapshots.

Read more about this topic:  Clariion

Famous quotes containing the word architecture:

    Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.
    Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)