Full-featured RAID for Massive Capacity:


The A24S RAID enclosure is designed with all the sophisticated high availability features including redundant RAID controllers, a common backplane, dedicated cross-controller ‘sync. cache’ channels, redundant cooling and power supply modules. Highest performance and spindle density is achieved within the compact design which provides dozens of terabytes in a 4U chassis.

The A24S takes advantages of SAS interface technology in terms of its ease of cabling and many folds of bandwidth compared with its SCSI predecessors. The system accommodates high capacity and low-cost SATA-II 3Gbps disk drives. With the additional cascade ports, RAID or expansion enclosures can be easily attached to include a total of an astonishing 264TB capacity (using 1TB SATA drives). As a capacity champion, the A24S does not compromise on its data protection functionality. The A24S supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, multi-level logical volumes, and all the renowned firmware functionality as other EonStor series models.

Software Features:

EonPath: The EonPath drivers coordinates with Microsoft MPIO, runs on Solaris and Linux platforms, and provides fault tolerance for multiple data paths and load-balancing algorithms. The EonPath also enables TPGS (Target Port Group Service) for optimizing I/Os through the optimal paths.

Snapshot: Snapshot enables point-in-time backup with high fidelity and minimal impact to ongoing applications. More significant is that the snapshot operation is processed by RAID hardware without load on host CPUs. Snapshot also features dedicated snapshot volumes, automated snapshot scheduler, and comprehensive disk space control.

SANWatch: SANWatch provides all functions necessary to discover, configure, administer, and monitor Infortrend’s RAID arrays; be they remote or many. The SANWatch also provides management interfaces for EonPath and Snapshot functions, so that all data protection and high availability features can be accessed through one interface.

Scalability: Expansion over SAS Wide Links:

Similar to Fibre Channel expansion loops, SAS expander technologies also enable the ease of connections when the need arises for more capacity. All you have to do is to attach the cables and use a flatblade screwdriver to select an enclosure ID by a rotary switch. The SAS WWN addresses will be automatically applied to all disk drives.

1. A single-controller RAID can attach to 4 expansion enclosures (64 HDD) via SAS wide links.

2. A redundant-controller RAID can attach to 2 expansion enclosures. Although the maximum no. of disk drives is reduced to 56, yet fault-tolerant links can be strung between RAID and JBOD enclosures.



Host Links:

Each A24S RAID controller comes with 4 multi-lane 12Gbps host ports. Host interfaces are defined as the IN and OUT ports. The OUT ports can either be used as host connection points or for cascading to other RAID enclosures.

Expansion with Drive Enclosures:

The A24S RAID series also supports the 3U-profile S16S-J1000 expansion enclosures as shown in the matching table below.

NOTE: JBOD connection requires the SFF-8088-to-SFF-8470 cables.