User`s guide

PLANNING FOR HYPER-V
November09 Page8
Figure 1 Dell PowerVault MD3000 Storage Array Configuration
• RAID level
An appropriate RAID level should be chosen based on your applications. RAID 1 or
higher provides some level of redundancy that is useful in the case of failed physical
disks. Each RAID level works best with certain applications. Consider the RAID level
when you configure the Dell PowerVault MD3000 storage array.
• Power
Connect the power supplies for the Dell PowerVault MD3000 storage array to
separate power sources. Doing this ensures that even if one component fails due to
a power issue, the alternative path continues to work.
Planning the IP SAN Installation with the Dell
PowerVault MD3000i
You can implement an IP SAN in various ways based on business requirements,
available resources, and intended application. For instance, one important but easily
overlooked item that can improve the manageability of your IP SAN implementation is to
assign a consistent and representative naming scheme to the storage arrays. This
assignment is especially useful if the SAN has more than one storage array attached.
You can use the “blink array” feature of the Modular Disk Storage Manager to correctly
identify each storage array physically.
This section contains some general implementation guidelines; however, these are
guidelines and might not benefit all applications.
IP SAN Considerations
Redundancy
Redundancy requires having a second set of hardware and communication paths so
that if one piece of hardware on one path breaks down, a second path can be used.
In an IP SAN, a second controller in the storage array can perform redundancy and
redundancy is available when you use two different switches for the iSCSI network.
Figure 2 shows such a configuration.