The CLARiiON® FC4500 is the first CLARiiON system to support multiple hosts. The FC4500, complemented by Access LogixTM and Navisphere® Manager software, allows you to build a storage infrastructure that supports today's constantly changing IT environment. The CLARiiON FC4500 storage system and Access Logix extend the value of a Storage Area Network outside the data center to more of the organization. To support high availability, servers can be removed, replaced, or added on the fly, an important benefit in today's 7x24 operations. Based upon Fibre Channel drive technologies, the FC4500 supports capacities from 90GB to 3.6TB.

Exploiting the Fibre Channel Interface to Deliver Unparalleled Performance

Whether it is a requirement to add to a Web site, replace an existing OLTP system, or build a data warehouse, today's IT organization must be able to respond at Internet speed. The FC4500 meets this need by providing a highly scalable, easy-to-reconfigure solution. The FC4500 is a fully redundant, high-availability array with no single point of failure. It retains all of the same data integrity and high-availability features for which CLARiiON is so well respected-global hot spares, redundant power and cooling, dual paths to Fibre Channel disk drives, data path parity checking throughout the array, and more.

Bridging the Gap

Business requirements are changing faster and faster, and most often, those changes directly affect your IT organization. To enable these environmets and answer the call for immediate, cost-effective reconfiguration, businesses must build an Information Infrastructure that answers the demanding challenges required by today's business initiatives. A successful Information Infrastructure in today's economy can not be centered exclusively at the data center. Distributed organizations, remote offices, and decentralised workgroups all share the need for information that is highly available, yet easy to reconfigure as enterprise requirements evolve. Applications like e-mail, Web servers, and customer relationship management are crucial to the success of an organization, yet often the servers providing these tools are local to their users, with hardware that is tied specifically to an application and supported by limited onsite management expertise. The CLARiiON FC4500 can help you bridge that gap.

Storage Consolidation

Distributed computing environments often contain a range of stand-alone systems targeted to solve specific application needs. For example, e-mail might be running on one or more NT-servers; a human resources or financial database application might be running on an IBM server; and engineering might be relying on a number of Sun servers. Each of these systems utilizes isolated host-supplied storage. While this may seem to be the simplest deploymemt method, it is not. Over time you will suffer from lack of flexibility to support changes in your business requirements, and ownership costs can go through the roof as capacity and server count inevitably grow.

Contrast this with building a SAN and consolidating information storage on a single, flexible platform. Storage can be allocated to servers on the fly. A single architecture allows deployment of common management practices. IT personel can devote themselves to new projects, not reconfiguring existing systems. Whether the solution is incremental storage or a new server rollout, a consolidated storage approach accelerates the time to availability while decreasing the administrative effort.

Highly Available Fibre Channel Storage

The FC4500 represents the fourth generation of Fibre Channel arrays from CLARiiON. In addition to its fault-resilient architecture, the FC4500 extends availability protection outside the array through CLARiiON Application Transparent FailoverTM software. This software ensures that users always have access to information, even in the event of a failure in one of the pathways between the host and the FC4500. This level of protection becomes paramount as you build larger Fibre Channel switched environments.

High Performance

The FC4500 fully exploits the Fibre Channel interface to deliver unparalleled performance. Capable of delivering more than 30,000 cached I/Os, and over 175MB/s, the FC4500 is the ideal array for a broad spectrum of applications. From OLTP and Webservers to data warehouses and graphicsintensive environments, the FC4500 delivers information fast.

Flexibility in Deployment Model

To facilitate standardization and consolidation, the CLARiiON FC4500 has a number of connectivity options. Direct attachment to a single host or cluster is provided through standard FC-AL connections. For multi-host storage consolidation, Fibre Channel switches and Access Logix software are available to facilitate connectivity and management of the complete environment.

Access Logix

Access Logix provides secure, shared, or selective access to the FC4500 storage array in both mixed and homogeneous platform environmets. Protection is provided on the CLARiiON FC4500 system and easily managed centrally and graphically with Navisphere Manager. Access Logix controls access to both reading and writing data, configuration changes, and management of array resources.

While allowing multiple hosts to share a single array, Access Logix creates a safe environment by protecting data where it resides -on the array.

Flexible Building-Block Architecture

One significant hallmark of the FC4500 is its architecture. As capacity requirements rise, storage can be added to the array on the fly. With this powerful capability, system users can even add servers to the array without halting operations-an important benefit in today's no -stop, 7x24 operations. In fact, adding capacity to a server is a simple click of a mousebutton-messy cabling and hardware reconfiguration are no longer required.

FC4500 System Management

If a fault occurs on the FC4500, it is noted on the navisphere screen. Administrators can then address the issue by viewing the FC4500 through the Navisphere storage management software tool set. Network management systems have also become an important tool for many organizations. To ensure ease of integrated use in management, the FC4500 can be integrated into a variety of Network management systems, like IBM Tivoli and HP Open View.

Cluster Support for Enhanced Application Availability

The CLARiiON FC4500 supports clustered hosts to enhance performance and data availability. Servers can be removed, replaced, or added, and additional FC4500 storage systems can be added on the fly.

Simplified IT Infrastructure Management with Navisphere

Navisphere storage management software extends the capabilities of CLARiiON arrays by delivering comprehensive business-wide storage management. Navisphere enables a business to effectively configure, monitor, and tune CLARiiON disk arrays. Navisphere simplifies the managememt of all CLARiiON storage devices, increasing the productivity of the system administration staff while reducing storage management costs.

Remote Diagnostics Protect Your Operations

CLARalert® remote support, automatically included with your CLARiiON FC4500 array, is a key tool we use to seek out and eliminate problems before they can affect your business. CLAR-alert detects hardware or software problems as they occur. CLARalert's diagnostic tools automatically transmit a machine-initiated (MI) notification packet to the responsible Support Center, where technical experts remotely dial in to your site to perform diagnostics. An automated escalation process for CLARalert-initiated situations ensures notification of all appropriate individuals at your site as well as on supplier site.

Onsite Warranty Protects Your Information

You receive around-the-clock coverage for your CLARiiON FC4500 system, including on site service, parts, and labor, 24-hours-a-day, seven -days-a-week, including holidays. CLARiiON hardware includes a standard two-year warranty, designed for mission-critical support. Warranty service is delivered directly by the responsible Customer Service organization, which is committed to providing coordinated support across multivendor platforms, technologies, and geographical boundaries.

Ventajas

• Achieve operational gains and accelerate server deployments through storage consolidation and multiple-host connectivity
• Reduce unplanned downtime and improve revenue generation by employing the FC4500, a highly available, fully redundant storage solution
• Boost IT productivity and reduce management costs across the enterprise with centralised storage-management tools
• Respond to changing requirements faster and protect your storage investment through the FC4500 "building-block" architecture
• Deliver more information with faster response times to your users
• Coverage includes on-site service, parts, and labor, 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week

Key Features

• Full Fibre Channel architecture
• Supports up to 100 disks for a total of 3.6 terabytes of storage (with 36GB drives)
• Built-in Fibre Channel hubs allow connectivity to dual-server clusters without using external hubs
• Dual active storage processors
• Two FC-AL host channels
• 1024MB Cache
• provides RAID levels 0, 1, 1/0, 3, and 5
• Up to 170MB per second throughput and 30,000 I/Os per second
• End-to-end checksum mechanism against data corruption
• Protection against data parity incoherence
• ATF (Application Transparent Failover)
• Dynamic Drive Expansion
• Supports UNIX (Sun Solaris, HP HP-UX, IBM AIX), Microsoft Windows NT, and Novell NetWare platforms
• Fully redundant Hardware: Dual Controller Active, Mirrored Write Cache, Dual Link Control Cards, Redundant Power Supplies, Redundant Cooling, Redundant Standby Power Supplies)
• Effectively configure, monitor, and tune CLARiiON disk arrays with Navisphere
• CLARalert's diagnostic tools provide automic failure notitication and remote dial-in