Evertz' Storage Controllers and Storage Expansion chassis provide scalable, RAID-protected storage to Evertz' clustered Media Server system. Various storage technologies and RAID types may be combined into a storage sub-system that provide multiple performance, storage capacity and data redundancy capabilities thereby allowing a single Media Server system that meets multiple price/performance goals.
Evertz' 10R12 Storage Controller (SC) and Storage Expansion (SE) are 2RU chassis composed of twelve (12) 3.5" Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). The Storage Controller contains dual-redundant, hot-swappable, hardware RAID Controllers that provide RAID protection across the internal twelve-drive array. Multiple Storage Expansion chassis may be attached to each Storage Controller using dual-redundant SAS expansion ports. RAID protection is thereby extended to each attached Expansion Chassis.
In most on-air and near-line archive media storage applications, data is RAID6 protected, so that each twelve-drive array connected to a Storage Controller could loose two drives and still provide access to the data. For very high read/write bandwidth applications, such as live event or sports production, RAID0 or RAID 10 striping is available by the Storage Controller. RAID0 striping can provide very high write bandwidth and RAID10 for a combination of very high write bandwidth with data mirroring.
Each dual-redundant RAID Controller in each Storage Controller has two 8Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) ports. These are connected to a pair of redundant 8Gbps FC switches which in turn are connected to each node in the Media Server cluster. The dual-redundant RAID Controllers, combined with the dual-redundant FC network paths and switches support ‘active-active' multi-pathing by the Media Server cluster. This not only provides each Media Server node with two FC paths to each Storage Controller, but enables data to travel across both paths for all reads and writes. Active-active multi-pathing assures that there are no latent double-faults that could take data off-line as are inherent in active-passive arrangements. Increasing the fault-resilience of each Storage Controller even further, the dual-redundant RAID Controllers provide active-active backup thus assuring that even if a single RAID Controller should fail, the redundant RAID Controller could access the drives in both the Storage Controller chassis and in all attached Storage Expansion chassis.
Storage Controllers, and their SAS-attached Storage Expansion chassis, can support multiple HDD types within a single Media Server system. Some SCs, and their SEs, can be composed of 15k or 10k RPM HDDs for high read/write performance and others can be composed of 7.2k RPM HDDs for high storage capacity. This allows multiple storage tiers within a single Media Server system. As an example, a high-performance storage tier composed of 15k or 10k RPM HDDs for on-air record and play, can be supplemented with a high capacity storage tier composed of 7.2k RPM HDDs as a near-line archive.
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