Active Storage 16TB ActiveRAID Hard Drive Array

Design

ActiveRAID Hardware and RAID Kernel Design

The ActiveRAID is not your average low-cost RAID system. It was designed with ease-of-use and deployment in Apple infrastructures in mind. Despite its low price, the ActiveRAID is based on a modern design with sophisticated features found on systems costing significantly more, and a number features not found anywhere else.

Active Storage started with a proven storage processor design and enterprise hardened RAID stack. The dual redundant active/active RAID controllers utilize the latest storage processor technology and run a Linux based operating system to provide ultra-fast data transfer and maximum reliability.

Light-Weight RAID Kernel

The Linux operating system provides a stable environment for the RAID kernel and allows Active Storage to finely tune the system's performance while taking advantage of a world-class TCP/IP networking stack and 128-bit SSL security. The light-weight RAID kernel maintains a small memory footprint for fast execution, and is enhanced with hardware accelerated X-OR calculation. This hardware/software combination gives the ActiveRAID excellent storage performance in all parity RAID levels.

Its RAID kernel has been specifically tuned to deliver maximum RAID 5 and RAID 6 performance. When combined with large synchronized cache streams, the system delivers excellent performance while guarding against any data loss. Dual 4Gb Fibre-Channel ports on each RAID controller deliver unprecedented performance and provide balanced throughput and instantaneous fail-over to improve the system's fault tolerance.

High Availability

The Ethernet management port on each RAID controller works independently, but offers fully redundant fail-over if an external Ethernet switch port or RAID controller port should fail. The SAS expansion port on each RAID controller offers a dual, bi-directional 3GB/s throughput speed allowing the secondary expansion system to provide full-speed operation when connected to a primary RAID system. The Primary and Secondary expansion systems work together seamlessly to provide optimal performance and low-cost expansion, all with simplified user interaction.

The active cooling system employed in the ActiveRAID utilizes triple independent hot-swappable blowers with forward curved fan blades that have been specifically tuned to deliver maximum airflow with reduced noise levels. This highly efficient and redundant system provides optimal controlled temperatures within the enclosure to minimize uneven thermal expansion in the system, offering better performance, longer life, and maximum reliability.

System power is provided by industry standard dual redundant fully load-sharing, hot-swappable power supplies. The power supplies are controlled by a power distribution network built into the ActiveRAID. The design is far more sophisticated than other systems in our price range. The power supplies are integrated into the system design in order to allow trickle power for remote turn on, shutdown, and restart. This design also allows a soft power system, which provides cache flush and proper shutdown at the power switch, preventing back-up battery drain and providing the best insurance against data loss due to improper shutdown. This also guards against unintended operator error.

The battery backed RAID controller cache system is redundant and truly modern in design. The sophisticated charging circuit was designed specifically for the needs of this RAID system and not an off-the shelf design as deployed by many competitors. The charging circuit maintains the highest level of charge while constantly conditioning the batteries. This prevents the common and often less than adequate number of hours of protection seen in some other systems, especially after months or years of operation. The ActiveRAID will maintain your data in cache for a minimum of 72 hours. A claim some other storage providers cannot make after just a few months of use. The ActiveRAID constantly monitors the batteries condition and state providing early warning, and will even suggest replacement when necessary.

We know your data and meeting your deadlines is critical, that is why the ActiveRAID supports all popular UPS systems.

Easy Serviceability

The ActiveRAID is a modern design and takes advantage of recent industry advances in component design and packaging allowing field serviceability by the average user. The design provides the user a quick reference visual indication of failed or questionable components from both the front and rear of the enclosure with user selectable audible warning. Additionally, using the included native Mac OS X management suite, users receive notification by e-mail of a failed component or a warning event.

Detecting problems is important, but that's not the complete story. Serviceability without complex scripts or even hand tools will keep you up and running -- that is the goal of the ActiveRAID. The ability to exchange nearly all active components with no interruption of service and without having to execute complex and cumbersome scripts puts serviceability in the hands of the average IT person. In most cases the component will be hot-swappable. Simply identify the bad component visually, remove it, replace with a good component and that's it. No downtime, no hassle. The ActiveRAID utilizes the finest components and enterprise quality connectors to ensure long life and predictable results.

The ActiveRAID delivers fast access to storage with superior reliability and throughput in the most demanding applications. It has been thoroughly tested with Apple Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Leopard and Xsan environments, and to provide cross platform compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, Server 2000 and Linux. Additionally, the ActiveRAID is compatible with Quantum StorNext in mixed Xsan environments.

Technology Partnerships

Active Storage maintains relationships with all popular Fibre-Channel infrastructure vendors to ensure Interoperability and best performance. Active Storage currently partners with Qlogic, Brocade, Cisco, ATTO Technology, LSI Logic, and Emulex. Active Storage continually tests and monitors conformance and compatibility with critical infrastructure partners.

Its low cost per gigabyte makes the ActiveRAID an exceptional value as primary storage. It is also ideal for tiered storage environment where it can be utilized to provide high-capacity, low cost storage in tertiary tiers behind larger enterprise storage systems, or other ActiveRAID systems. Active Storage works closely with BakBone and Atempo and popular tape library manufactures to ensure compatibility with their software backup and archive software solutions.

Overall, the ActiveRAID is an outstanding protected storage value for Apple users.

Management

Advanced RAID Management

The Apple Xserve RAID set the high-water mark for storage management on Mac OS X. Other RAID systems with clunky Windows Explorer-like browser based interfaces, difficult to use command line interfaces and even cryptic LCD displays just seemed antiquated and out of place, and more importantly not particularly Apple-friendly. Active Storage knew they could do better.

They asked a number of Apple users what would be the best storage management approach for them; the answer was unanimous: "a Cocoa management application." They got the message loud and clear and began developing a native application suite for Mac OS X, and they are happy to say it's here now. Setup, management, and monitoring. A perfect complement to the performance, redundancy, and features of the ActiveRAID. They feel it's absolutely the best way to manage external storage on Mac OS X.

Active Storage started out by breaking up the common grouping of administrative and monitoring functions in a single tool. User studies told Active Storage that the grouping of Admin and monitoring was easier for the programmers, but was highly limiting in ease of use as RAID systems became more complex with features such as active/active redundancy and secondary expansion systems.

Most admin tasks are done in initial setup, or when updating or changing configurations which is infrequent. Whereas, the monitoring is often daily.

The complexity of displaying the "heavy lifting" management tasks alongside the "light-weight" daily monitoring views overly complicated the application. In a number of cases having joint management and monitoring -- even with separate passwords opened up the user up to making a catastrophic mistake such as deleting all their data. Let's face it, you are not likely to "Admin" your storage daily if you have chosen a reliable well performing product.

Active Storage found that by the separating out the setup and admin functions, they could make the Admin process more automated and guided, making the task much less laborious than found with other systems. They felt this was a much better approach for tasks that are so infrequent.

Active Admin

The Active Admin features a guided Setup making setting up your first or fiftieth ActiveRAID easy.

Because Active Admin is Mac OS X native, you won't have to deal with browser based application limitations and non Apple-like interfaces. To make setup even easier, Active Storage added Bonjour discovery. The guided setup gets you up and running in minutes, and allows changes to made on-the-fly without memorization of difficult commands or referring to long manuals.

Active Admin is not only easy to use, it's easy to get started with. Management is performed "out-of-band" over Ethernet. And because Active Storage built in Bonjour, you won't have to memorize IP addresses or use serial ports to initially talk to your RAID. If your Mac is on the network, you are ready to Admin your ActiveRAID. Choosing the best-optimized configuration for your application is automatic, as are software updates and non-disruptive firmware updates. Active Admin is as powerful as it is easy.

Management of the ActiveRAID is further simplified by the modern design of the RAID controller and the RAID Kernel. Many of the tasks required to set up and maintain earlier systems are just not required.

Active Viewer

By breaking out the daily monitoring tasks from the Admin functions, Active Storage was able to develop a fast "light-weight" native Mac OS X viewer providing an at-a-glance view of one or dozens of ActiveRAID systems. With a simple intuitive interface, there is no learning curve to deal with. And because it's a viewer only, you can't make a mistake and damage your configuration or destroy your data inadvertently.

Active Viewer, like Active Admin, utilizes the power of Bonjour to make discovery and monitoring of ActiveRAID systems easy. The intuitive interface lets you navigate quickly and drill-down into the ActiveRAID. The viewer's remote capabilities let you monitor systems anywhere in the world as easily as you can monitor in the same room.

ActiveRAID Widget

Many current Apple storage users that Active Storage spoke with wanted an even simpler way to monitor their storage on a daily basis, and with the help of Mac OS X Leopard Active Storage was able to deliver it. They developed a simple yet highly effective Dashboard Widget.

The ActiveRAID widget provides an at-a-glance view of your system and utilizes the Growl notification system to keep you informed of warnings or failures in real-time. Clicking on a warning or failure opens the Active Viewer automatically allowing you a finer grain view of the event.

iPhone

With the native management suite complete, Active Storage knew they could do even more. Apple provided them the greatest application platform since Mac OS X -- the incredible iPhone. The iPhone presented them with the perfect canvas to reinvent storage management; they call it "Storage Remote Control." Monitoring your storage remotely was never more convenient or powerful. The application is also compatible with the iPad.

Performance

ActiveRAID Performance

The ActiveRAID was designed to deliver best in class performance in high-demand Apple applications. Whether deployed directly-attached to the Apple Xserve, supporting a large server network, or in a complex Xsan environment, the ActiveRAID gets the job done.

Active Storage understand how important consistent and repeatable performance is, and that is what they deliver. Their Xsan and Mac OS X Server certified technicians are constantly testing and optimizing performance. They strive for the highest throughput with maximum reliability with the quickest and easiest deployment.

Performance optimization is not a one-time task -- it's an on-going quest. Active Storage's engineers are putting their many years of Mac operating system and driver development knowledge and experience to work constantly evolving our products to meet changing user and application requirements.

They spend considerable time tuning our performance in the Xsan environment to ensure reliable high-throughput and low latency storage performance, a key requirement in delivering consistent, repeatable results -- helping you meet your production deadlines.

Active Storage sees our users as partners, and value user input on testing, configurations, and interoperability. They want to hear from you on what works and what doesn't. They will answer your requests, and provide feedback and enhancements, as they are available.