DEC-StorageWorksComponents&Enclosures

Digital's StorageWorks system offers a comprehensive, flexible, and upgradeable solution for data storage, emphasizing modularity and future-proofing.

Key Features:

• Modular Architecture: The core concept revolves around "building blocks" – industry-standard 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch disk, tape, and optical devices enclosed in carriers. Controllers, power supplies, battery backup units, and cooling fans are also modular and swappable.
• Hot-Pluggable & Tool-Free: Components can be inserted or removed without powering down the system and without tools, allowing for quick and easy maintenance and upgrades.
• Flexibility & Reconfiguration: The modular design allows users to create custom storage solutions today and easily reconfigure or expand them as needs change, protecting initial investments by enabling equipment reuse.

• Shelves & Enclosures:

  • Building-Block Shelves primarily hold storage devices.
  • Controller Shelves house intelligent controllers, supporting enhanced capabilities like RAID.
  • These shelves fit into various enclosures: compact deskside expansion units for PCs and workstations, and larger datacenter cabinets (SW800 and SW500) that can accommodate multiple shelves, DLT tape subsystems, and advanced controllers for complete, high-capacity storage solutions.

• High Availability: The system supports redundant elements like power supplies, controllers, and cooling fans to build highly available configurations with no single points of failure.

• Connectivity: Utilizes SCSI-2 buses, with signal converters available to extend SCSI cable lengths for flexible system layouts.

Benefits:

• Investment Protection: Allows for reuse of existing components and easy addition of new ones as requirements evolve.
• Low Cost-of-Ownership: Designed for long-term adaptability and efficient management.
• Ease of Maintenance: Quick-swap components reduce downtime and simplify problem resolution.
• Scalability: Easily expands or reconfigures to meet growing and changing data storage needs.