FAS3100 series
Sep 16th 2008Unitek NetApp BlogUncategorized
Those of you who follow Netapp may have noticed the arrival of two new models, the FAS3140 and FAS3170. These systems are interesting for a number of reasons, but the one that particularly caught my eye is the form factor.
For many years now, Netapp has offered systems in the lower part of their range that are often referred to as “shrunken heads”. These are the FAS250 and the FAS270. They stood out from the rest of Netapp’s product line because they are not “dedicated” heads, but shared space in the back of a disk shelf. From the front, all you see are drives. And in the case of the FAS270C, it was possible to have a Netapp active-active cluster contained within the back of a single drive tray.
This made for an economical system, but there is no slot available on a 270, so expansion was limited to additional disk trays. The FAS2020 carries on this idea, while the FAS2050 does as well, but adds a single slot for expansion. In all these cases, the cluster interconnect between the heads is entirely internal.
Contrast this with the rest of Netapp’s lineup. On all the midrange and high-end systems there is a combination cards which takes up a slot for the cluster interconnect. This means that a FAS3000 series machine, which has 4 slots available in a standalone configuration, drops down to three available when configured as an active-active cluster configuration. Each head loses a slot to the NVRAM/Cluster interconnect card.
Not with the FAS3140 and FAS3170. Like the previous mid-range and higher machines, the head electronics get a dedicated “shelf”, but unlike the previous machines, the form factor for this “shelf” contains the electronics for two heads. And like the lower-end systems, the cluster interconnect is internal so it doesn’t subtract from the slot count.
This is great news.
A FAS3000 series running in active-active cluster configuration would have a total of 6 slots available (3 in each head). The FAS3100 machines will have eight (4 in each head) in the same configuration, providing an improvement in flexibility as well as performance.
