HP 3PAR StoreServ 10000 Storage Physical Planning Manual

1 System Components and Specifications
This chapter describes the system components and physical and capacity specifications for the HP
3PAR StoreServ 10000 Storage systems.
HP 3PAR Storage System Components
HP 3PAR Storage systems are designed around a cluster-based approach that incorporates
sophisticated data management and fault tolerance technologies that can meet the storage needs
of smaller sites and can easily be scaled for global organizations. They are intelligent, compact,
extremely dense storage units where each is capable of holding a large number of disk drives in
a small rack space (EIA-standard rack units).
The HP 3PAR StoreServ 10000 Storage is housed in 2 meter (2M) cabinets and is comprised of
the following components:
• Controller nodes are high-performance, data movement engines that provide the caching
capabilities and manage the flow of data in a storage system. The 10400 Storage system
can accomodate two or four controller nodes while the 10800 can accommodate two, four,
six or eight nodes.
• The 3PAR Storage backplane works in conjunction with the controller nodes to route data.
This passive, full-mesh backplane enables high-bandwidth and low-latency internal pathing
that supersedes bus-, switch-, and even InfiniBand-based architectures.
• The Drive Chassis houses the drive cages that, in turn, contain the drive bays. Each drive bay
contains one magazine that can hold four hard disk drives.
• Fibre Channel adapters and FC-AL modules provide high speed routing of data and enable
granular and potentially massive connectivity to hosts and to the drive chassis.
• The Service Processor provides the remote error detection and reporting capabilities that
support diagnostic and maintenance activities for storage systems. In general, one Service
Processor (SP) s required per storage system.
HP 3PAR Storage System Components 5